IT IS TIME THE ROSE COLORED GLASSES COME OFF AND ALL OF US TAKE A LOOK AT REALITY. IT AIN'T GOOD FOLKS, IT IS DESPERATE AND GETTING WORSE. THIS MESSIAH IS IN THE PROCESS OF DESTROYING OUR NATION. AS EVIDENCE OF THIS ARTICLE, AND ON THIS SAME DAY DISCUSSION OF ALLOWING RUSSIAN MILITARY AIRCRAFT TO BE STATIONED IN CUBA. SOME ONE IN THIS GOVERNMENT HAS GOT TO WAKE UP AND IT MUST BE THE NATION AS WE RID OURSELVES OF THIS SELF PROCLAIMED MESSIAH. WHERE IS OUR SPINE? HAVE WE LOST IT ALL?
FOR GOODNESS SAKE SOMEONE ANSWER ME.
Apparently the HNTIC (Head Negro That's In Charge) is sticking by his plan for a new civilian Brown Shirt Army (ala Germany 1936).
Excerpts from Obama's speech today at the dedication of Abraham Lincoln Hall at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C.:
"The attacks of 9/11 signaled the new dangers of the 21st century. And today, our people are still threatened by violent extremists ...
Yet terrorism and extremism make up just one part of the many challenges that confront our nation. ... A historic economic downturn has put at stake the prosperity that underpins our strength, while putting at risk the stability of governments and the survival of people around the world. ... Poverty, disease, the persistence of conflict and genocide in the 21st century challenge our international alliances, partnerships and institutions -- and must call on all of us to reexamine our assumptions.
These are the battlefields of the 21st century. These are the threats that we now face. And in these struggles, the United States of America must succeed -- and we will succeed.
We also know that the old approaches won't meet the challenges of our time. ... No army -- no matter how strong -- can eliminate every adversary. No weapon -- no matter how powerful -- can erase the hatred that lies in someone's heart.
So it falls to institutions like this -- and to individuals like you -- to help us understand the world as it is, to develop the capacities that we need to confront emerging danger, and to act with purpose and pragmatism to turn this moment of peril into one of promise. That's how we will find new pathways to peace and security. That is the work that we must do.
Now, make no mistake: This nation will maintain our military dominance. ... But we also need to look beyond this conventional advantage as we develop the new approaches and new capabilities of the 21st century -- and in that effort, this university must play a critical role.
America must also balance and integrate all elements of our national power. We cannot continue to push the burden on to our military alone, nor leave dormant any aspect of the full arsenal of American capability. And that's why my administration is committed to renewing diplomacy as a tool of American power, and to developing our civilian national security capabilities. This effort takes place within the walls of this university, where civilians sit alongside soldiers in the classroom. And it must continue out in the field, where American civilians can advance opportunity, enhance governance and the rule of law, and attack the causes of war around the world. We have to enlist our civilians in the same way that we enlist those members of the armed services in understanding this broad mission that we have.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Say it again, Margaret, loud and clear!
Say it again, Margaret, loud and clear!
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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jerome Corsi: U.S. Becoming a 'Dual Country'
Jerome Corsi: U.S. Becoming a 'Dual Country'
Wednesday, March 11, 2009 1:35 PM
By: Rick Pedraza Article Font Size
Jerome Corsi says he warned the nation about President Barack Obama’s socialist indoctrination when he wrote last year's New York Times best-selling book, “The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality.” Now, he fears, the U.S. is becoming a “dual country."
“I think it’s ongoing right now,” Corsi says. “We’re already becoming a dual country.”
The author, pundit and political scientist says that Obama is using open borders, economic integration, and the crises surrounding the financial meltdown to “advance the agenda of worldwide integration, economically on the way to political integration."
[Editor's Note: Watch Jerome Corsi discuss the coming dual nation - Go Here Now]
The goal is simple: “redistribution of income.” It’s a trait deeply rooted in Obama’s youth as a community organizer and follower of the late Chicago radical Saul Alinsky. Alinsky, Corsi says, advised radicals in the ‘60s “to cut their hair and run for office. Say whatever was necessary to get elected; listen to the grievances of the people so you can appear to be one of them.
“But when you got elected, the goal was to redistribute income,” Corsi adds. “It appears to be the only consistent theme in the early days of the Obama presidency.”
Corsi believes the U.S.A. under Obama could make an alliance with Mexico and Canada. It’s a theme he touched on in his book, “The Late, Great U.S.A.”
How will this happen? It is the intent of the Obama administration, Corsi says, to legalize the estimated 12 million illegal aliens in the U.S. to make it "virtually impossible for any Republican to be elected president" again.
“President Obama said as much,” he notes. “He went on (Spanish language) Univision radio and told Spanish listeners that comprehensive immigration reform was going to be introduced by the Obama administration very soon.”
Corsi says Obama’s plan will include fast tracks set up for illegal immigrants to achieve citizenship under guest-worker programs, or “some other form of citizenship or entitlement they have by being here.
“I think the idea for Democrats on the left is that open borders imports an underclass which will vote Democratic for generations to come,” Corsi says of the administration's plan to nationalize illegal aliens. But Republicans, too, are responsible for the trend: their pro-business wing favors “cheap workers that can be used in the jobs that can’t be outsourced overseas,” Corsi says.
Corsi says the fact that 10 percent of Mexico’s population currently lives in the U.S. today is another sign of the U.S. becoming a dual country. He also notes there are 50 Mexican consulates in the U.S. to protect civil rights of Mexicans to live as Mexican national citizens, under Mexican law, within the United States.
Democrats also are seeking to gain control over the airwaves. Encouraging and promoting diversity and communication via media ownership is, essentially, accomplishing the same thing as bringing back the Fairness Doctrine, Corsi argues.
“President Obama says he is not in favor of the Fairness Doctrine, and that tends to put everybody asleep saying, ‘Oh, we’ve dodged a bullet,’” Corsi offers.
“But this whole idea of decentralizing radio stations -- where you would say that in any market area, no radio chain could have more than 10 percent of ownership of the radio stations -- this would be an attempt to attack syndication,” Corsi says of syndicated talk radio shows by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, or Mark Levin.
“It’s an attempt to backdoor the breakup of conservative talk radio. And it will be a tragedy because commercial radio will suffer. If ‘Air America’ and Al Franken had been a commercial success, the Democrats wouldn’t need a government regulation in order to restrain the First Amendment," Corsi says..
“It’s a totally political move,” Corsi warns. “I don’t see the Democrats trying to restrain MSNBC from being totally in love with Barack Obama."
The Democrats, Corsi says, "can’t tolerate criticism. You’ve got a president with a thin skin who doesn’t like to be criticized – and he’s going to attack the First Amendment as a consequence.”
[Editor's Note: Watch Jerome Corsi discuss the coming dual nation - Go Here Now]
© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009 1:35 PM
By: Rick Pedraza Article Font Size
Jerome Corsi says he warned the nation about President Barack Obama’s socialist indoctrination when he wrote last year's New York Times best-selling book, “The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality.” Now, he fears, the U.S. is becoming a “dual country."
“I think it’s ongoing right now,” Corsi says. “We’re already becoming a dual country.”
The author, pundit and political scientist says that Obama is using open borders, economic integration, and the crises surrounding the financial meltdown to “advance the agenda of worldwide integration, economically on the way to political integration."
[Editor's Note: Watch Jerome Corsi discuss the coming dual nation - Go Here Now]
The goal is simple: “redistribution of income.” It’s a trait deeply rooted in Obama’s youth as a community organizer and follower of the late Chicago radical Saul Alinsky. Alinsky, Corsi says, advised radicals in the ‘60s “to cut their hair and run for office. Say whatever was necessary to get elected; listen to the grievances of the people so you can appear to be one of them.
“But when you got elected, the goal was to redistribute income,” Corsi adds. “It appears to be the only consistent theme in the early days of the Obama presidency.”
Corsi believes the U.S.A. under Obama could make an alliance with Mexico and Canada. It’s a theme he touched on in his book, “The Late, Great U.S.A.”
How will this happen? It is the intent of the Obama administration, Corsi says, to legalize the estimated 12 million illegal aliens in the U.S. to make it "virtually impossible for any Republican to be elected president" again.
“President Obama said as much,” he notes. “He went on (Spanish language) Univision radio and told Spanish listeners that comprehensive immigration reform was going to be introduced by the Obama administration very soon.”
Corsi says Obama’s plan will include fast tracks set up for illegal immigrants to achieve citizenship under guest-worker programs, or “some other form of citizenship or entitlement they have by being here.
“I think the idea for Democrats on the left is that open borders imports an underclass which will vote Democratic for generations to come,” Corsi says of the administration's plan to nationalize illegal aliens. But Republicans, too, are responsible for the trend: their pro-business wing favors “cheap workers that can be used in the jobs that can’t be outsourced overseas,” Corsi says.
Corsi says the fact that 10 percent of Mexico’s population currently lives in the U.S. today is another sign of the U.S. becoming a dual country. He also notes there are 50 Mexican consulates in the U.S. to protect civil rights of Mexicans to live as Mexican national citizens, under Mexican law, within the United States.
Democrats also are seeking to gain control over the airwaves. Encouraging and promoting diversity and communication via media ownership is, essentially, accomplishing the same thing as bringing back the Fairness Doctrine, Corsi argues.
“President Obama says he is not in favor of the Fairness Doctrine, and that tends to put everybody asleep saying, ‘Oh, we’ve dodged a bullet,’” Corsi offers.
“But this whole idea of decentralizing radio stations -- where you would say that in any market area, no radio chain could have more than 10 percent of ownership of the radio stations -- this would be an attempt to attack syndication,” Corsi says of syndicated talk radio shows by Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, or Mark Levin.
“It’s an attempt to backdoor the breakup of conservative talk radio. And it will be a tragedy because commercial radio will suffer. If ‘Air America’ and Al Franken had been a commercial success, the Democrats wouldn’t need a government regulation in order to restrain the First Amendment," Corsi says..
“It’s a totally political move,” Corsi warns. “I don’t see the Democrats trying to restrain MSNBC from being totally in love with Barack Obama."
The Democrats, Corsi says, "can’t tolerate criticism. You’ve got a president with a thin skin who doesn’t like to be criticized – and he’s going to attack the First Amendment as a consequence.”
[Editor's Note: Watch Jerome Corsi discuss the coming dual nation - Go Here Now]
© 2009 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Joe Arpaio Harassing A Lawman
Harassing A Lawman
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, March 13, 2009 4:20 PM PT
Immigration: At a time when our border is becoming a war zone, something's a bit suspect about the Justice Department suddenly harassing a border-state sheriff who zealously enforces the law.
Last Tuesday, the Justice Department notified Joe Arpaio, the top lawman in Maricopa County, Ariz., including Phoenix, that his department is under investigation for "patterns" of discriminatory police practices and unconstitutional searches and seizures. The letter offered zero specifics.
But we'd guess those specifics closely match the radical agenda of community organizers like La Raza, ACORN and other government-funded immigration lobbyists, all of whom launched a coordinated campaign "message" at about the same time.
Arpaio: Least of our worries?
Congress, meanwhile, has a witch hunt of its own going against Arpaio that popped up about the same time. This too is strange, because Arpaio has been at it since 1993 and hasn't changed a bit.
Sure, like Rush Limbaugh, Arpaio's an easy target. He's bombastic and carries out his duties with gusto. That's why he's popular with Arizona voters and a target of open-border activists.
We trust that Sheriff Arpaio is more than able to defend himself against these vague allegations. But to go after him at a time like this also strikes us as being an egregiously misplaced priority.
As everyone knows, there's a war coming up from Mexico that is fast spilling over into the United States. Arpaio's Phoenix now has the second-highest kidnapping rate in the world. It's a war all right, linked to the very smuggling crimes that Arpaio is fighting.
Going after him now sends a disturbing message about U.S. priorities to Mexico's organized criminals. They'll profit from an enfeebled law enforcement effort in that state, which is what this Justice bid would do.
Arpaio's department is the largest participant in the 287(g) federal program that lets local police departments help enforce federal immigration laws. His deputies cooperate with federal agencies, such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), that break up smuggling rings. Since 2006, Arpaio has handed over 22,616 illegal immigrants to Immigration for deportation.
Maricopa deputies have also cracked down on those who ship illegal immigrants to sweatshops and other slave settings — scooping up 1,250 of them. The deputies enforce federal law as well by turning in illegal immigrants who commit other crimes — about 1,582 in all.
While Arpaio annoys the illegal immigration lobby, he frightens Mexico's smugglers and cuts into their business. The reality is that by going after him with lawsuits, smugglers get a very big obstacle to their U.S. operations removed.
Make no mistake: The violent criminal enterprises Mexico is fighting are the same ones smuggling meth, cocaine and illegal immigrants.
At best, whoever wants Joe in jail over civil rights violations doesn't think the laws Arpaio struggles to enforce are as important as satisfying special interest groups.
It amounts to politics at the expense of national security. And wittingly or not, it does the cartels' bidding. Using the fig leaf of "human rights violations" to defang the cops is something Medellin cartel cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar pioneered at the height of his power in the early 1990s. It ought to be seen for the ruse that it is.
Email To Friend |
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, March 13, 2009 4:20 PM PT
Immigration: At a time when our border is becoming a war zone, something's a bit suspect about the Justice Department suddenly harassing a border-state sheriff who zealously enforces the law.
Last Tuesday, the Justice Department notified Joe Arpaio, the top lawman in Maricopa County, Ariz., including Phoenix, that his department is under investigation for "patterns" of discriminatory police practices and unconstitutional searches and seizures. The letter offered zero specifics.
But we'd guess those specifics closely match the radical agenda of community organizers like La Raza, ACORN and other government-funded immigration lobbyists, all of whom launched a coordinated campaign "message" at about the same time.
Arpaio: Least of our worries?
Congress, meanwhile, has a witch hunt of its own going against Arpaio that popped up about the same time. This too is strange, because Arpaio has been at it since 1993 and hasn't changed a bit.
Sure, like Rush Limbaugh, Arpaio's an easy target. He's bombastic and carries out his duties with gusto. That's why he's popular with Arizona voters and a target of open-border activists.
We trust that Sheriff Arpaio is more than able to defend himself against these vague allegations. But to go after him at a time like this also strikes us as being an egregiously misplaced priority.
As everyone knows, there's a war coming up from Mexico that is fast spilling over into the United States. Arpaio's Phoenix now has the second-highest kidnapping rate in the world. It's a war all right, linked to the very smuggling crimes that Arpaio is fighting.
Going after him now sends a disturbing message about U.S. priorities to Mexico's organized criminals. They'll profit from an enfeebled law enforcement effort in that state, which is what this Justice bid would do.
Arpaio's department is the largest participant in the 287(g) federal program that lets local police departments help enforce federal immigration laws. His deputies cooperate with federal agencies, such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), that break up smuggling rings. Since 2006, Arpaio has handed over 22,616 illegal immigrants to Immigration for deportation.
Maricopa deputies have also cracked down on those who ship illegal immigrants to sweatshops and other slave settings — scooping up 1,250 of them. The deputies enforce federal law as well by turning in illegal immigrants who commit other crimes — about 1,582 in all.
While Arpaio annoys the illegal immigration lobby, he frightens Mexico's smugglers and cuts into their business. The reality is that by going after him with lawsuits, smugglers get a very big obstacle to their U.S. operations removed.
Make no mistake: The violent criminal enterprises Mexico is fighting are the same ones smuggling meth, cocaine and illegal immigrants.
At best, whoever wants Joe in jail over civil rights violations doesn't think the laws Arpaio struggles to enforce are as important as satisfying special interest groups.
It amounts to politics at the expense of national security. And wittingly or not, it does the cartels' bidding. Using the fig leaf of "human rights violations" to defang the cops is something Medellin cartel cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar pioneered at the height of his power in the early 1990s. It ought to be seen for the ruse that it is.
Email To Friend |
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Senate Democrats try to thwart GOP move on pay
YOU MUST REMEMBER THE ONLY ITEM IF IMPORT TO A DAMN POLITICIAN IS THE HEALTH INSURANCE WHICH THE COMMON PERON CN'T GET AT A RESONABLE COST. TENURE ON THE TALKING COURSE PROVIDES MANY MANY TIMES WHAT THE SALARY OF A POLITICO WOULD BE.
DAVE ANDERSON ANCHORAGE ALASKA
Speak up before it's to late! The freedom of speech amendment may be next!! The Congressmen are getting another raise! Poor fellows!
Senate Democrats try to thwart GOP move on pay
Senate Democrats are trying to thwart Republican efforts to force a vote on congressional pay raises on a must-pass spending.
Full Story: KGET-TV Bakersfield
View of joint meeting of U.S. Congress as President Barack Obama addresses them February 24, 2009 at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. (Alex Wong, Getty Images) WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate has voted to skip a pay raise for members of Congress next year, conscious of the deepening recession and 12 million of their constituents out of work.
But lawmakers will keep their annual automatic pay raises after that.
A huge spending bill that the Senate passed Tuesday contained a provision denying lawmakers their yearly pay raise next January.
Earlier Tuesday, the Senate rejected an amendment by Louisiana Republican David Vitter that would have forced members of Congress who want to boost their own salaries to stand up and be counted.
Congress' most recent pay raise of $4,700 came in January. That boosted the salaries of rank and file lawmakers to $174,000.
DAVE ANDERSON ANCHORAGE ALASKA
Speak up before it's to late! The freedom of speech amendment may be next!! The Congressmen are getting another raise! Poor fellows!
Senate Democrats try to thwart GOP move on pay
Senate Democrats are trying to thwart Republican efforts to force a vote on congressional pay raises on a must-pass spending.
Full Story: KGET-TV Bakersfield
View of joint meeting of U.S. Congress as President Barack Obama addresses them February 24, 2009 at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. (Alex Wong, Getty Images) WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate has voted to skip a pay raise for members of Congress next year, conscious of the deepening recession and 12 million of their constituents out of work.
But lawmakers will keep their annual automatic pay raises after that.
A huge spending bill that the Senate passed Tuesday contained a provision denying lawmakers their yearly pay raise next January.
Earlier Tuesday, the Senate rejected an amendment by Louisiana Republican David Vitter that would have forced members of Congress who want to boost their own salaries to stand up and be counted.
Congress' most recent pay raise of $4,700 came in January. That boosted the salaries of rank and file lawmakers to $174,000.
Muslim community rallies behind Sudbury man charged by the FBI
Muslim community rallies behind Sudbury man charged by the FBI
Once again, a Muslim is arrested by the FBI on terrorism-related charges. And once again, the response from Muslim leaders is to play the victim card and lash out at the FBI. This in spite of the fact that for years the FBI leadership has bent over backwards to reach out to the Muslim community, even to the point of utilizing organizations like CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations) to conduct sensitivity training sessions for its agents.
ACT! for America is conducting seven “Citizens in Action” conferences this year, six of which are available to anyone anywhere in the world via a live webcast. If you want to better understand why militant Islamists act as they do, and what we must do to stop them…if you want to be able to better communicate what you already know to friends and family members…if you want to be able to better detect signs of suspicious activity in your community…or write a persuasive letter to an elected official or a local newspaper…
…you will want to attend this conference. For as little as $19 you will learn all this and much, much more – and our conference comes with a “money-back guarantee.” Join Brigitte Gabriel, Executive Director Guy Rodgers, and National Field Director Kelly Cook to get enlightened, encouraged and empowered. Click here to register or find out more.
Muslim community rallies behind Sudbury man charged by the FBI
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2009/03/08/muslim_community_rallies_behind_sudbury_man
_charged_by_the_fbi?mode=PF
By Milton J. Valencia, Globe Staff | March 8, 2009
To friends and family, he was a maturing leader in the Muslim community, a passionate writer who was departing for Saudi Arabia for a career as a pharmacist. But the arrest of Tariq Mehanna in November, as he was about to board a plane at Logan International Airport for his new life in the Middle East, has cast the 26-year-old in darker terms, as a liar supporting and associating with terrorists.
With an indictment in federal court, the Sudbury man faces a maximum sentence of eight years in prison on charges of lying to investigators in a terrorism inquiry. But a community of supporters has rallied around him, questioning how Mehanna could have been ensnared in a federal case and whether he is being used a pawn in the FBI's war on terrorism.
"They're kind of painting the wrong picture of the Muslim community," said S. Ahmad Zamanian of Houston, a friend of Mehanna's. "Anyone who has met Tariq . . . would all tell you that this man is far removed from anyone's definition of a terrorist."
Mehanna has been released pending trial after his parents posted more than $1 million in surety, including their sprawling Sudbury home. His lawyers, led by J.W. Carney Jr. of Boston, are challenging the case.
But he is also fighting a separate battle to shed a stigma that has shadowed him since his arrest, as he faces scrutiny over his blog postings, his acquaintances, and his associations with people such as Daniel Maldonado, who later became the first American charged with terrorism activities in Somalia.
Just as often as Mehanna's friends have defended him, others have referred to him as an "Al Qaeda blogger." His interpretations of Arabic passages - seen as poetic by some - have been taken by critics as a promotion of Islamic fundamentalism.
"You can bet that the FBI arrest on relatively minor charges was taken because there was a reasonable fear that Mehanna was leaving the country to join or further support the jihad himself," said a blogger known as Rusty Shackleford, on the popular Jawa Report website he runs that monitors terrorism investigations.
Citing the ongoing case, the FBI and federal prosecutors would not comment for this article, only referring to the federal indictment.
It is clear that Mehanna did not help his case by openly supporting controversial figures such as Aafia Siddiqui, the Pakistani woman who was on the FBI's Most Wanted List before she was arrested last year on charges of shooting at a US soldier in Afghanistan. A 1995 MIT graduate, Siddiqui reportedly established ties with Al Qaeda during her time in Boston.
In another example of questionable associations, some of the inspiration for Mehanna's writings were prominent fundamentalist figures such as Abdullah Azzam and Sayyid Qutb, who are considered significant influences by Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood, a fundamentalist movement.
Mehanna does not dispute his support of Siddiqui, or the sources of his writings. But through his lawyer, Carney, he characterized such support as nothing more than following his own beliefs.
He says he has never met Siddiqui but is concerned with the controversy surrounding her arrest, noting her supporters around the world have questioned how a frail woman could have managed to wrestle a weapon away from armed military men and shoot at a soldier, while getting shot twice, as is reported. Humanitarian groups have also questioned her mysterious disappearance and sudden arrest in Afghanistan, he noted.
Also, through his lawyer, Mehanna questioned the characterization of the figures he cites in his blogs, saying they are considered "freedom fighters" by others, including those who supported Afghanistan's opposition to Soviet Union oppression two decades ago - a movement that was supported at the time by the US government.
"You can take your inspiration from these leaders, and then others will characterize you, whether they agree with your actions or disagree," Carney said.
Mehanna was not one to hide his devotion to Islam, and he seemed to be more dedicated to his religion as he matured from a guitar-playing high school student into a local leader who taught at religious schools and gave sermons during Friday services. He created a blog called Iskandrani, a name tied to his Egyptian ancestry, and was considered a leader to teenagers at the Worcester Islamic Center. He went under the name Abu Sabaya, which he translated as "Father of Children."
As he encountered others as devout as himself, Mehanna met Maldonado, a Massachusetts native who converted to Islam in 2000. Maldonado, also known as Daniel Aljughaifi, immersed himself in his new religion, wearing traditional Arab clothing and reportedly chastising anyone he considered to be a sinner, even criticizing Arabs who did not fulfill tradition by growing a full beard.
The two met at a Lowell mosque some time around 2003. Maldonado eventually moved to Houston, where he worked for a website that had been criticized for its sympathetic views of terrorists. He uprooted with his family to Egypt, and then to Somalia, where he joined rebels who were trying to form a pure Islamic government.
Mehanna, who in that time earned a doctorate degree from the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, spoke by phone with his old friend in December 2006 and he was invited to join in the fighting, authorities contend. Mehanna told Maldonado - who used code phrases such as "peanut butter and jelly," to say, "I'm here fighting" - that he should not say such things over the telephone, according to court records.
Federal prosecutors allege Mehanna obstructed a terrorism investigation when he told FBI agents just days after the phone call that he had not spoken with Maldonado for weeks and that he thought Maldonado was still in Egypt.
Because the FBI was conducting a terrorism investigation, the penalty of lying to the agency is more severe than similar charges of making false statements.
FBI agents with a Joint Terrorism Task Force had reached out to Mehanna as early as October 2005, asking him about a trip a year earlier to Yemen, according to court records. Carney has said in court that the trip was for educational purposes.
But he has suggested that the interview was a disguise of other political intentions and said that the agents were really trying to turn his client into an informant. When Mehanna would not assist investigators, Carney said, agents set up his client, asking him about Maldonado's whereabouts when they already had him under surveillance in Somalia, Carney said.
After the interview about Maldonado, agents told Mehanna and his family - as recently as April 2008 - that they would file charges unless he cooperated, Carney has said in court.
Carney said his client finished his school work, found a new career with attractive benefits, and was about to board a flight when agents arrested him - two years after the alleged crime. "At some point, he has to get on with his life," Carney said.
According to terrorism specialists, the tactic of turning low-level suspects into confidential informants is nothing new. It has been more common with the FBI, as agents have had a lack of success infiltrating Muslim communities on their own because of scant understanding of the culture and a shortage of agents who speak Arabic, said Mathieu Deflem, a professor at the University of South Carolina and author on terrorism subjects.
He added that the FBI will do anything it can in the war on terrorism to prove it is succeeding.
But the strategy does not mean that the arrest of Mehanna was not justified, according to Jean Rosenbluth, a law professor at the University of Southern California, who said it was not a coincidence that Mehanna was arrested as he was about to leave for Saudi Arabia, which does not have an extradition treaty with the United States.
The case has offended some Muslims who have seen popular leaders targeted for minor offenses in the war on terrorism.
In the case of Mehanna, local leaders crowded his initial court hearings as a show of support, saying they feel as if their community has been targeted since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Abdul Cader Asmal, a local leader and past president of the Islamic Center of Boston and the Islamic Council of New England, said the arrest of Mehanna was another setback for the Muslim community.
Asmal said he cannot make a judgment on the arrest until the case is heard in court, but he added that the boy he shared Superman comic books with in Sunday school years ago deserved better treatment than to be arrested at an airport as he was about to start a new job.
"Every time a Muslim is found to do something .. . . he's treated as a common criminal," Asmal said. "And no one will stand up for the Muslim community."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ACT for America
P.O. Box 12765
Pensacola, FL 32591
www.actforamerica.org
ACT for America is an issues advocacy organization dedicated to effectively organizing and mobilizing the most powerful grassroots citizen action network in America, a grassroots network committed to informed and coordinated civic action that will lead to public policies that promote America’s national security and the defense of American democratic values against the assault of radical Islam. We are only as strong as our supporters, and your volunteer and financial support is essential to our success. Thank you for helping us make America safer and more secure.
Once again, a Muslim is arrested by the FBI on terrorism-related charges. And once again, the response from Muslim leaders is to play the victim card and lash out at the FBI. This in spite of the fact that for years the FBI leadership has bent over backwards to reach out to the Muslim community, even to the point of utilizing organizations like CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations) to conduct sensitivity training sessions for its agents.
ACT! for America is conducting seven “Citizens in Action” conferences this year, six of which are available to anyone anywhere in the world via a live webcast. If you want to better understand why militant Islamists act as they do, and what we must do to stop them…if you want to be able to better communicate what you already know to friends and family members…if you want to be able to better detect signs of suspicious activity in your community…or write a persuasive letter to an elected official or a local newspaper…
…you will want to attend this conference. For as little as $19 you will learn all this and much, much more – and our conference comes with a “money-back guarantee.” Join Brigitte Gabriel, Executive Director Guy Rodgers, and National Field Director Kelly Cook to get enlightened, encouraged and empowered. Click here to register or find out more.
Muslim community rallies behind Sudbury man charged by the FBI
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2009/03/08/muslim_community_rallies_behind_sudbury_man
_charged_by_the_fbi?mode=PF
By Milton J. Valencia, Globe Staff | March 8, 2009
To friends and family, he was a maturing leader in the Muslim community, a passionate writer who was departing for Saudi Arabia for a career as a pharmacist. But the arrest of Tariq Mehanna in November, as he was about to board a plane at Logan International Airport for his new life in the Middle East, has cast the 26-year-old in darker terms, as a liar supporting and associating with terrorists.
With an indictment in federal court, the Sudbury man faces a maximum sentence of eight years in prison on charges of lying to investigators in a terrorism inquiry. But a community of supporters has rallied around him, questioning how Mehanna could have been ensnared in a federal case and whether he is being used a pawn in the FBI's war on terrorism.
"They're kind of painting the wrong picture of the Muslim community," said S. Ahmad Zamanian of Houston, a friend of Mehanna's. "Anyone who has met Tariq . . . would all tell you that this man is far removed from anyone's definition of a terrorist."
Mehanna has been released pending trial after his parents posted more than $1 million in surety, including their sprawling Sudbury home. His lawyers, led by J.W. Carney Jr. of Boston, are challenging the case.
But he is also fighting a separate battle to shed a stigma that has shadowed him since his arrest, as he faces scrutiny over his blog postings, his acquaintances, and his associations with people such as Daniel Maldonado, who later became the first American charged with terrorism activities in Somalia.
Just as often as Mehanna's friends have defended him, others have referred to him as an "Al Qaeda blogger." His interpretations of Arabic passages - seen as poetic by some - have been taken by critics as a promotion of Islamic fundamentalism.
"You can bet that the FBI arrest on relatively minor charges was taken because there was a reasonable fear that Mehanna was leaving the country to join or further support the jihad himself," said a blogger known as Rusty Shackleford, on the popular Jawa Report website he runs that monitors terrorism investigations.
Citing the ongoing case, the FBI and federal prosecutors would not comment for this article, only referring to the federal indictment.
It is clear that Mehanna did not help his case by openly supporting controversial figures such as Aafia Siddiqui, the Pakistani woman who was on the FBI's Most Wanted List before she was arrested last year on charges of shooting at a US soldier in Afghanistan. A 1995 MIT graduate, Siddiqui reportedly established ties with Al Qaeda during her time in Boston.
In another example of questionable associations, some of the inspiration for Mehanna's writings were prominent fundamentalist figures such as Abdullah Azzam and Sayyid Qutb, who are considered significant influences by Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood, a fundamentalist movement.
Mehanna does not dispute his support of Siddiqui, or the sources of his writings. But through his lawyer, Carney, he characterized such support as nothing more than following his own beliefs.
He says he has never met Siddiqui but is concerned with the controversy surrounding her arrest, noting her supporters around the world have questioned how a frail woman could have managed to wrestle a weapon away from armed military men and shoot at a soldier, while getting shot twice, as is reported. Humanitarian groups have also questioned her mysterious disappearance and sudden arrest in Afghanistan, he noted.
Also, through his lawyer, Mehanna questioned the characterization of the figures he cites in his blogs, saying they are considered "freedom fighters" by others, including those who supported Afghanistan's opposition to Soviet Union oppression two decades ago - a movement that was supported at the time by the US government.
"You can take your inspiration from these leaders, and then others will characterize you, whether they agree with your actions or disagree," Carney said.
Mehanna was not one to hide his devotion to Islam, and he seemed to be more dedicated to his religion as he matured from a guitar-playing high school student into a local leader who taught at religious schools and gave sermons during Friday services. He created a blog called Iskandrani, a name tied to his Egyptian ancestry, and was considered a leader to teenagers at the Worcester Islamic Center. He went under the name Abu Sabaya, which he translated as "Father of Children."
As he encountered others as devout as himself, Mehanna met Maldonado, a Massachusetts native who converted to Islam in 2000. Maldonado, also known as Daniel Aljughaifi, immersed himself in his new religion, wearing traditional Arab clothing and reportedly chastising anyone he considered to be a sinner, even criticizing Arabs who did not fulfill tradition by growing a full beard.
The two met at a Lowell mosque some time around 2003. Maldonado eventually moved to Houston, where he worked for a website that had been criticized for its sympathetic views of terrorists. He uprooted with his family to Egypt, and then to Somalia, where he joined rebels who were trying to form a pure Islamic government.
Mehanna, who in that time earned a doctorate degree from the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, spoke by phone with his old friend in December 2006 and he was invited to join in the fighting, authorities contend. Mehanna told Maldonado - who used code phrases such as "peanut butter and jelly," to say, "I'm here fighting" - that he should not say such things over the telephone, according to court records.
Federal prosecutors allege Mehanna obstructed a terrorism investigation when he told FBI agents just days after the phone call that he had not spoken with Maldonado for weeks and that he thought Maldonado was still in Egypt.
Because the FBI was conducting a terrorism investigation, the penalty of lying to the agency is more severe than similar charges of making false statements.
FBI agents with a Joint Terrorism Task Force had reached out to Mehanna as early as October 2005, asking him about a trip a year earlier to Yemen, according to court records. Carney has said in court that the trip was for educational purposes.
But he has suggested that the interview was a disguise of other political intentions and said that the agents were really trying to turn his client into an informant. When Mehanna would not assist investigators, Carney said, agents set up his client, asking him about Maldonado's whereabouts when they already had him under surveillance in Somalia, Carney said.
After the interview about Maldonado, agents told Mehanna and his family - as recently as April 2008 - that they would file charges unless he cooperated, Carney has said in court.
Carney said his client finished his school work, found a new career with attractive benefits, and was about to board a flight when agents arrested him - two years after the alleged crime. "At some point, he has to get on with his life," Carney said.
According to terrorism specialists, the tactic of turning low-level suspects into confidential informants is nothing new. It has been more common with the FBI, as agents have had a lack of success infiltrating Muslim communities on their own because of scant understanding of the culture and a shortage of agents who speak Arabic, said Mathieu Deflem, a professor at the University of South Carolina and author on terrorism subjects.
He added that the FBI will do anything it can in the war on terrorism to prove it is succeeding.
But the strategy does not mean that the arrest of Mehanna was not justified, according to Jean Rosenbluth, a law professor at the University of Southern California, who said it was not a coincidence that Mehanna was arrested as he was about to leave for Saudi Arabia, which does not have an extradition treaty with the United States.
The case has offended some Muslims who have seen popular leaders targeted for minor offenses in the war on terrorism.
In the case of Mehanna, local leaders crowded his initial court hearings as a show of support, saying they feel as if their community has been targeted since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Abdul Cader Asmal, a local leader and past president of the Islamic Center of Boston and the Islamic Council of New England, said the arrest of Mehanna was another setback for the Muslim community.
Asmal said he cannot make a judgment on the arrest until the case is heard in court, but he added that the boy he shared Superman comic books with in Sunday school years ago deserved better treatment than to be arrested at an airport as he was about to start a new job.
"Every time a Muslim is found to do something .. . . he's treated as a common criminal," Asmal said. "And no one will stand up for the Muslim community."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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www.actforamerica.org
ACT for America is an issues advocacy organization dedicated to effectively organizing and mobilizing the most powerful grassroots citizen action network in America, a grassroots network committed to informed and coordinated civic action that will lead to public policies that promote America’s national security and the defense of American democratic values against the assault of radical Islam. We are only as strong as our supporters, and your volunteer and financial support is essential to our success. Thank you for helping us make America safer and more secure.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
‘Undeclared War’
I WOULD OFFER THE FOLLOWING AS A SOLUTION. WHEN THE IDIOT INCHARGE OF THIS
MESS BRINGS THE TROOPS HOME SENd THEM TO THE BORDER STATES AND ENFORCE THE
LAW ONE WAY OR THE OTHER. BUT IN ANY EVENT STOP THE ILLEGALS. DA
'Undeclared War’ on Mexican Border Greater Challenge than Afghanistan, Congressmen Say
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
By Penny Starr, Senior Staff Writer
Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) said at the hearing that Mexico's instability is a greater risk to U.S. security than Afghanistan. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)(CNSNews.com) – The violence along the U.S.-Mexico border is the biggest threat to the nation’s security, members of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security said at back-to-back hearings on Tuesday.
Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas) thanked the witnesses, including David Aguilar, chief of the U.S. Border Patrol, for their service in an “undeclared war.”
“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what all of you do,” Culberson said. “You truly are in our prayers on a daily basis.”
“You’re on the front lines of an undeclared war unlike any we’ve ever seen on the southern border probably since 1916,” Culberson said, referring to Brig. Gen. John J. Pershing's expedition into Mexico with 10,000 troops in an effort to capture the infamous revolutionary Pancho Villa after Villa had conducted attacks inside the United States.
Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas) said that the violence in Mexico is an "undeclared war" facing the United States. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)“I think we are at the point today that we need to send the Black Jack Pershing into the Southern United States and put it in command of a true, fast-reaction military force that can move up and down that border on the U.S. side,” Culberson said.
“We are in a state of undeclared war on the southern border that has already spilled over [into the United States], and it’s utterly unrealistic to think that it hasn’t,” he said.
Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) told committee members and witnesses that the U.S. government might rethink its military and national security priorities.
David Aguilar, chief of the U.S. Border Patrol, testified that while progress is being made on securing the border more work needs to be done. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)“In the other hearing I just came from, I learned that one of our problems is that the Department of Defense somehow puts Afghanistan ahead of the challenges on the Mexican border,” Lewis said.
“I used to head that subcommittee, and I’ll tell you that what’s going on with our biggest trading partner in respect to this drug problem, it is our No. 1 challenge,” he said.
The two back-to-back hearings on border security and the drug cartel-induced violence along the U.S. Mexico border, which lasted four hours, revealed details about the ongoing violence in Mexico as the drug cartels battle the police and military for access to smuggling routes that bring drugs into the United States and money and guns into Mexico.
"It's caught the attention of Congress, it's certainly caught the attention of Americans, especially those living near the border," Rep. David Price (D-N.C.) said as he began the second hearing focusing on violence along the U.S. Mexico border.
Witnesses said drug dealers use gliders and a massive network of tunnels to surpass border security, including the 610 miles of pedestrian and vehicle fencing that’s been constructed along the border.
Jayson Ahern, acting commissioner of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said that seizures of cocaine have increased 119 percent in the last fiscal year.
He also spoke about cooperation between the U.S. and Mexican government in the “transit zone,” including an early January interception of a self-propelled submarine carrying 25 metric tons of cocaine toward the coast of Mexico.
Ahern said the U.S. Border Patrol “deals with drug traffickers on a daily basis,” and that last year 327 agents were assaulted while in the line of duty.
Rep. David Price (D-N.C.) chaired two hearing on Tuesday by the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security on securing the U.S. border and the violence in Mexico spawned by the drug cartels. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)The hearing included discussion on a wide range of issues, including the progress and funding of the 2005 Secure Border Initiative and the treatment of women and children who are detained for illegally entering the country.
But Culberson said the answer to the border question has already been found in the Del Rio section of Texas where a “zero tolerance” operation, dubbed Operation Streamline, has resulted in approximately 80 percent of people who cross into the country illegally being arrested.
“It’s a great success story,” Culberson said. “This is, Mr. Chairman, the win-win situation we are looking for.”
Culberson said the operation is being implemented in other areas along the Texas-Mexico border with increasing success, adding that states like Arizona should consider a similar approach.
“The Tucson sector is a real problem, Mr. Chairman, and this is an incredible fact to wrap up on,” Culberson said. “If you are arrested in the Tucson sector, crossing into the United States illegally, carrying less than 500 pounds of marijuana, you have a 99.6 percent chance of never being prosecuted and never go to jail for more than a few hours, which is a source of great frustration to your border agents, isn’t it chief?”
“Yes, sir,” Aguilar said.
“And that number hasn’t changed much, has it?” Culberson asked.
“No, not at this point,” Aguilar said.
“So, Tucson is wide open,” Culberson said.
“Tucson is being worked on,” Aguilar said.
“You’re doing your best, but it’s the U.S. prosecutor,” Culberson said.
“The point is, is that there are wildly different levels of enforcement, the border is wide open in Tucson, we found the solution in Texas, and it’s real simple,” Culberson said. “It’s law enforcement.”
Marcy Forman, director of the Office of Investigations with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Mark Koumans, deputy assistant secretary for International Affairs with the Department of Homeland Security, and Mark Borkowki, executive director of the Secure Border Initiative, also testified at the hearings.
MESS BRINGS THE TROOPS HOME SENd THEM TO THE BORDER STATES AND ENFORCE THE
LAW ONE WAY OR THE OTHER. BUT IN ANY EVENT STOP THE ILLEGALS. DA
'Undeclared War’ on Mexican Border Greater Challenge than Afghanistan, Congressmen Say
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
By Penny Starr, Senior Staff Writer
Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) said at the hearing that Mexico's instability is a greater risk to U.S. security than Afghanistan. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)(CNSNews.com) – The violence along the U.S.-Mexico border is the biggest threat to the nation’s security, members of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security said at back-to-back hearings on Tuesday.
Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas) thanked the witnesses, including David Aguilar, chief of the U.S. Border Patrol, for their service in an “undeclared war.”
“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what all of you do,” Culberson said. “You truly are in our prayers on a daily basis.”
“You’re on the front lines of an undeclared war unlike any we’ve ever seen on the southern border probably since 1916,” Culberson said, referring to Brig. Gen. John J. Pershing's expedition into Mexico with 10,000 troops in an effort to capture the infamous revolutionary Pancho Villa after Villa had conducted attacks inside the United States.
Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas) said that the violence in Mexico is an "undeclared war" facing the United States. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)“I think we are at the point today that we need to send the Black Jack Pershing into the Southern United States and put it in command of a true, fast-reaction military force that can move up and down that border on the U.S. side,” Culberson said.
“We are in a state of undeclared war on the southern border that has already spilled over [into the United States], and it’s utterly unrealistic to think that it hasn’t,” he said.
Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) told committee members and witnesses that the U.S. government might rethink its military and national security priorities.
David Aguilar, chief of the U.S. Border Patrol, testified that while progress is being made on securing the border more work needs to be done. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)“In the other hearing I just came from, I learned that one of our problems is that the Department of Defense somehow puts Afghanistan ahead of the challenges on the Mexican border,” Lewis said.
“I used to head that subcommittee, and I’ll tell you that what’s going on with our biggest trading partner in respect to this drug problem, it is our No. 1 challenge,” he said.
The two back-to-back hearings on border security and the drug cartel-induced violence along the U.S. Mexico border, which lasted four hours, revealed details about the ongoing violence in Mexico as the drug cartels battle the police and military for access to smuggling routes that bring drugs into the United States and money and guns into Mexico.
"It's caught the attention of Congress, it's certainly caught the attention of Americans, especially those living near the border," Rep. David Price (D-N.C.) said as he began the second hearing focusing on violence along the U.S. Mexico border.
Witnesses said drug dealers use gliders and a massive network of tunnels to surpass border security, including the 610 miles of pedestrian and vehicle fencing that’s been constructed along the border.
Jayson Ahern, acting commissioner of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said that seizures of cocaine have increased 119 percent in the last fiscal year.
He also spoke about cooperation between the U.S. and Mexican government in the “transit zone,” including an early January interception of a self-propelled submarine carrying 25 metric tons of cocaine toward the coast of Mexico.
Ahern said the U.S. Border Patrol “deals with drug traffickers on a daily basis,” and that last year 327 agents were assaulted while in the line of duty.
Rep. David Price (D-N.C.) chaired two hearing on Tuesday by the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security on securing the U.S. border and the violence in Mexico spawned by the drug cartels. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)The hearing included discussion on a wide range of issues, including the progress and funding of the 2005 Secure Border Initiative and the treatment of women and children who are detained for illegally entering the country.
But Culberson said the answer to the border question has already been found in the Del Rio section of Texas where a “zero tolerance” operation, dubbed Operation Streamline, has resulted in approximately 80 percent of people who cross into the country illegally being arrested.
“It’s a great success story,” Culberson said. “This is, Mr. Chairman, the win-win situation we are looking for.”
Culberson said the operation is being implemented in other areas along the Texas-Mexico border with increasing success, adding that states like Arizona should consider a similar approach.
“The Tucson sector is a real problem, Mr. Chairman, and this is an incredible fact to wrap up on,” Culberson said. “If you are arrested in the Tucson sector, crossing into the United States illegally, carrying less than 500 pounds of marijuana, you have a 99.6 percent chance of never being prosecuted and never go to jail for more than a few hours, which is a source of great frustration to your border agents, isn’t it chief?”
“Yes, sir,” Aguilar said.
“And that number hasn’t changed much, has it?” Culberson asked.
“No, not at this point,” Aguilar said.
“So, Tucson is wide open,” Culberson said.
“Tucson is being worked on,” Aguilar said.
“You’re doing your best, but it’s the U.S. prosecutor,” Culberson said.
“The point is, is that there are wildly different levels of enforcement, the border is wide open in Tucson, we found the solution in Texas, and it’s real simple,” Culberson said. “It’s law enforcement.”
Marcy Forman, director of the Office of Investigations with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Mark Koumans, deputy assistant secretary for International Affairs with the Department of Homeland Security, and Mark Borkowki, executive director of the Secure Border Initiative, also testified at the hearings.
"NEW YORK POST ARTICLE Jan 24, 09
THANKS TO JIM FOR THIS UNHERALDED NOTICE FROM THE NEW YORK POST, IT IS REALLY GREAT WHEN THE READERS PARTICIPATE AND SEND US TIMELY ITEMS.
"NEW YORK POST ARTICLE Jan 24, 09
Despite the fact it was buried on page 17, at least some element of the news media isn't completely covering for The Obamas
Date: Thursday, February 12, 2009, 9:25 am
At the top right hand corner of Page 17 of the New York Post of January 24th, 2009, was a short column entitled "Replacing Michelle" in the National Review "The Week" column. I found this interesting, so here it is, word for word, as it appeared:
Some employees are simply irreplaceable. Take Michelle Obama: The University of Chicago Medical center hired her in 2002 to run "programs for community relations, neighborhood outreach, volunteer recruitment, staff diversity and minority contracting".
In 2005 the hospital raised her salary from $120,000 to $317,000 - nearly twice what her husband made as a Senator.
Oh did we mention that her husband had just become a US Senator? He sure had. Requested a $1 Million earmark for the UC Medical Center, in fact. Way to network Michelle!
But now that Mrs Obama has resigned, the hospital says her position will remain unfilled. How can that be, if the work she did was vital enough to be worth $317,000?
We can think of only one explanation: Senator Roland Burris's wife wasn't interested.
Note: Let me add that Michelle's position was a half time, 20 hour a week job. And to think they were critical of [now impeached ex-gov.] Blagojevich's wife for taking $100,000 in fuzzy real estate commission
"NEW YORK POST ARTICLE Jan 24, 09
Despite the fact it was buried on page 17, at least some element of the news media isn't completely covering for The Obamas
Date: Thursday, February 12, 2009, 9:25 am
At the top right hand corner of Page 17 of the New York Post of January 24th, 2009, was a short column entitled "Replacing Michelle" in the National Review "The Week" column. I found this interesting, so here it is, word for word, as it appeared:
Some employees are simply irreplaceable. Take Michelle Obama: The University of Chicago Medical center hired her in 2002 to run "programs for community relations, neighborhood outreach, volunteer recruitment, staff diversity and minority contracting".
In 2005 the hospital raised her salary from $120,000 to $317,000 - nearly twice what her husband made as a Senator.
Oh did we mention that her husband had just become a US Senator? He sure had. Requested a $1 Million earmark for the UC Medical Center, in fact. Way to network Michelle!
But now that Mrs Obama has resigned, the hospital says her position will remain unfilled. How can that be, if the work she did was vital enough to be worth $317,000?
We can think of only one explanation: Senator Roland Burris's wife wasn't interested.
Note: Let me add that Michelle's position was a half time, 20 hour a week job. And to think they were critical of [now impeached ex-gov.] Blagojevich's wife for taking $100,000 in fuzzy real estate commission
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
BEWARE THE TROJAN HORSE
BEFORE MAKING A DECISION AS IMPORTANT AS YOUR HEALTH CARE ONE SHOULD CONSIDER THE FOLLOWING. WHO WOULD YOU TRUST TO WRITE A HEALTH BILL OR EVEN HAVE A FINGER IN IT;S CREATION.
HILLARY CLINTON THE WANNABE SAVIOUR (REMEMBER THE SECRET MESS IN THE BEGINNING OF THE TENURE OF THOSE TWO DEVIANTS, (ONE FOR POWER THE OTHER FOR SEX).
I WOULDN'T THEM WRITING ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE HEALTH OF MY ANIMALS MUCH LESS ME.
HOW ABOUT THE LIKES OF JOHN EDWARDS. A TRIAL LAWYER WHO MAKE MILLIONS SUING THE HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANIES, THIS WOULD GIVE YOU THOUGHTS OF WHAT HOLES ARE IN THE COVERAGE FOR HIM TO HAVE MADE WHAT HE DID.
SHARPTON, DINGLE, SPECTRE, REED, PELOSI, OBAMA, JUST ADD THE NAMES OF THE REST OF WASHINGTON TO THIS LIST, THIS WOULD BE WHO YOU DON'T WANT TO HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH YOUR HEALTH DARE.
JUST REMEMBER THE TAKING OVER OF THE INSURANCE COMPANY IS JUST SHORT OF TAKING OVER THE MEDICAL FACILITY TOO. YOU REMEMBER THE DEBAUCHEL AT WALTER REED ARMY MEDICAL.
MY OPINION DAVE ANDERSON.
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY |
Posted Tuesday, March 10, 2009 4:20 PM PT
Health Care: Americans need to ask themselves if they really want to drive private insurers out of the medical marketplace, because that's what President Obama's plan would do.
The public should be thankful these days for any small favor it gets. Here's one: The White House health care reform juggernaut appears to be losing steam.
A few weeks ago, the administration lost Tom Daschle, the man it was depending on to steer its agenda through Congress. Now it's finding that not everyone out there shares its sense of urgency. With the economy in deep trouble and the banking system still largely paralyzed, fixing health care — which has lots of problems but no crisis — can wait.
The debate has barely begun. Let it be a very long one.
Maybe, for a year or two, the politicians should do nothing more than talk. That would be far better than to rush ahead with the plan that the president was promoting during his campaign and, we have to assume, would prefer to see enacted now.
As we said at the time, Obama's plan is a blueprint for socialization in stages. It starts with a basically good idea — setting up a truly national market (which we don't have now) for private insurance — and stacks the odds against the insurers by putting a tax-subsidized plan in the mix.
The private plans would have to be at least as generous as the public plan; this was stated explicitly by the Obama campaign. However, they would be denied its subsidy, so it would be impossible for them to match its benefits and still make money.
It would be like herding sheep into the fold and letting the wolf in. Or you can think of the public plan as a Trojan horse. Once allowed inside the gates of the health insurance market and given an unfair advantage, it will eventually out-compete its private rivals and gain monopoly power.
At least two interest groups, big labor and the insurers, get this.
Unions that want to see government-run health care see the public insurance plan as a crucial step toward that ultimate goal. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) has been circulating petitions insisting that Americans need "the choice of a public plan, so we're not left at the mercy of the same private insurance companies that have gotten us into the mess."
Insurers see their survival in the medical market at stake. As a result, Obama is already having trouble keeping all the health care players at the table.
Last week, the AFSCME and another union, the Service Employees International Union, pulled out of the Healthcare Reform Dialogue, a coalition of unions, employers, insurers, hospitals, doctors, patients, drug companies and consumers. The group had been meeting since last September. According to members who spoke to the New York Times, they could not agree on two issues. One was the proposed mandate on employers to pay for insurance. The other was Obama's public insurance plan.
Politically, health insurers are an easy target. They get no attention when they do one part of their job — protecting consumers from being ruined by medical bills — and plenty of attention when they do the bad-cop work of controlling costs.
As much as possible, they say no to exotic, untested and wasteful medical procedures. They earn the wrath of doctors by doing so, but they keep premiums from being even worse than they are now.
They also use their bargaining power to get discounts for their policyholders on drugs and medical procedures. If the government were to take over their job, it would have to do exactly the same things, only with no competition to give consumers a choice.
All the chatter about health care reform really boils down to the question of who will hold the commanding economic heights and pay most of the bills. Will that ground be shared by government and a viable private-sector insurance business, as it is now, or will government take it all?
The choice is between giving consumers a real market of competing insurers and steering them steadily toward single-payer.
That's a weighty decision, and it must not be rushed.
Email To Friend |
HILLARY CLINTON THE WANNABE SAVIOUR (REMEMBER THE SECRET MESS IN THE BEGINNING OF THE TENURE OF THOSE TWO DEVIANTS, (ONE FOR POWER THE OTHER FOR SEX).
I WOULDN'T THEM WRITING ANYTHING TO DO WITH THE HEALTH OF MY ANIMALS MUCH LESS ME.
HOW ABOUT THE LIKES OF JOHN EDWARDS. A TRIAL LAWYER WHO MAKE MILLIONS SUING THE HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANIES, THIS WOULD GIVE YOU THOUGHTS OF WHAT HOLES ARE IN THE COVERAGE FOR HIM TO HAVE MADE WHAT HE DID.
SHARPTON, DINGLE, SPECTRE, REED, PELOSI, OBAMA, JUST ADD THE NAMES OF THE REST OF WASHINGTON TO THIS LIST, THIS WOULD BE WHO YOU DON'T WANT TO HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH YOUR HEALTH DARE.
JUST REMEMBER THE TAKING OVER OF THE INSURANCE COMPANY IS JUST SHORT OF TAKING OVER THE MEDICAL FACILITY TOO. YOU REMEMBER THE DEBAUCHEL AT WALTER REED ARMY MEDICAL.
MY OPINION DAVE ANDERSON.
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY |
Posted Tuesday, March 10, 2009 4:20 PM PT
Health Care: Americans need to ask themselves if they really want to drive private insurers out of the medical marketplace, because that's what President Obama's plan would do.
The public should be thankful these days for any small favor it gets. Here's one: The White House health care reform juggernaut appears to be losing steam.
A few weeks ago, the administration lost Tom Daschle, the man it was depending on to steer its agenda through Congress. Now it's finding that not everyone out there shares its sense of urgency. With the economy in deep trouble and the banking system still largely paralyzed, fixing health care — which has lots of problems but no crisis — can wait.
The debate has barely begun. Let it be a very long one.
Maybe, for a year or two, the politicians should do nothing more than talk. That would be far better than to rush ahead with the plan that the president was promoting during his campaign and, we have to assume, would prefer to see enacted now.
As we said at the time, Obama's plan is a blueprint for socialization in stages. It starts with a basically good idea — setting up a truly national market (which we don't have now) for private insurance — and stacks the odds against the insurers by putting a tax-subsidized plan in the mix.
The private plans would have to be at least as generous as the public plan; this was stated explicitly by the Obama campaign. However, they would be denied its subsidy, so it would be impossible for them to match its benefits and still make money.
It would be like herding sheep into the fold and letting the wolf in. Or you can think of the public plan as a Trojan horse. Once allowed inside the gates of the health insurance market and given an unfair advantage, it will eventually out-compete its private rivals and gain monopoly power.
At least two interest groups, big labor and the insurers, get this.
Unions that want to see government-run health care see the public insurance plan as a crucial step toward that ultimate goal. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) has been circulating petitions insisting that Americans need "the choice of a public plan, so we're not left at the mercy of the same private insurance companies that have gotten us into the mess."
Insurers see their survival in the medical market at stake. As a result, Obama is already having trouble keeping all the health care players at the table.
Last week, the AFSCME and another union, the Service Employees International Union, pulled out of the Healthcare Reform Dialogue, a coalition of unions, employers, insurers, hospitals, doctors, patients, drug companies and consumers. The group had been meeting since last September. According to members who spoke to the New York Times, they could not agree on two issues. One was the proposed mandate on employers to pay for insurance. The other was Obama's public insurance plan.
Politically, health insurers are an easy target. They get no attention when they do one part of their job — protecting consumers from being ruined by medical bills — and plenty of attention when they do the bad-cop work of controlling costs.
As much as possible, they say no to exotic, untested and wasteful medical procedures. They earn the wrath of doctors by doing so, but they keep premiums from being even worse than they are now.
They also use their bargaining power to get discounts for their policyholders on drugs and medical procedures. If the government were to take over their job, it would have to do exactly the same things, only with no competition to give consumers a choice.
All the chatter about health care reform really boils down to the question of who will hold the commanding economic heights and pay most of the bills. Will that ground be shared by government and a viable private-sector insurance business, as it is now, or will government take it all?
The choice is between giving consumers a real market of competing insurers and steering them steadily toward single-payer.
That's a weighty decision, and it must not be rushed.
Email To Friend |
Davis-Bacon Pork
DO NOT MISUNDERSTAND MY OBJECTION TO THE DAVIS-BACON BILL. MY SON HAS WORKED UNDER DAVIS-BACON RULES AS REGARDS WORK SITE SAFETY AND JOB SPECIFICATIONS AS WELL AS RECEIVING A HIGHER PAY THAN STRAIGHT CONTRACTOR PAY, IN SOME CASES THE CONTRACTOR USING UNION (DAVIS-BACON TYPES) RATHER THAN NON-UNION SHOPS IS SOME WORKERS HAVE A BIT MORE EXPERIENCE. THE PAY HOWEVER IS THE SAME, UNION OR NON=UNION.
I DO BELIEVE THAT POLITICIANS MUST BELONG TO A UNION THAT CERTIFIES THAT WHAT WE GET IS WORTH THE EXPENSE. ALL OF THOSE IN US GOVT SERVICE SHOULD WALK BACKWARD TO RECEIVE THEIR CHECKS, NO COMPETENCE NO PAY, AND START WITH 511 PLUS IDIOTS ALREADY THERE. DAVE ANDERSON
Davis-Bacon Pork
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, March 10, 2009 4:20 PM PT
Labor: The stimulus bill wastes billions by requiring that labor on funded construction projects be paid a "prevailing," meaning union, wage. Why should our infrastructure be rebuilt under a Jim Crow era law intended to block minorities?
The Depression-era Davis-Bacon Act is applied throughout the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (H.R. 1). The original law, passed in 1931, required federal construction contractors to pay what is determined to be the "prevailing wage" in a given area.
The law was introduced and passed to block wage competition from black construction workers following an Alabama contractor's successful bid on a federal construction project on Long Island in 1927.
At the Department of Labor, two agencies gather information related to wages and labor: the Wage and Labor Division (WHD) as well as the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). It is the WHD that has the job of calculating the prevailing wage under the Davis-Bacon Act.
A 2008 study by Suffolk University and the Beacon Hill Institute found that WHD prevailing wage estimates were 22% higher than the BLS average reported wages paid in various cities. The reason is madness in the WHD's method.
According to the Suffolk study, the structure of the WHD methodology results in lower participation from small and midsize firms, provides an opportunity for unions to dominate the process of reporting wages, and lets as few as 12.5% of survey respondents set wages for the entire universe of workers.
In contrast, the BLS uses the Occupational Employment Survey, which collects wage data from more than 1.2 million establishments. Thus BLS wage estimates rely on a much larger sample that better represents wages that prevail in the labor market.
The application of the Davis-Bacon Act to stimulus projects ensures that stimulus dollars will not go as far as they otherwise could. That will result in fewer people getting jobs while raising the cost of everything we build. According to the Heritage Foundation, Davis-Bacon provisions will drive up construction costs on the $188 billion worth of construction projects in HR 1 by $17 billion.
According to Heritage, WHD's methodology is "unscientific" and relies on "outdated" surveys to produce "inaccurate" information. Heritage describes the BLS as an agency "that accurately estimates wage statistics using scientific methods."
The differences between the two can be significant.
On Long Island, N.Y., for example, market rates for plumbers calculated the BLS way are $29.68 an hour. Davis-Bacon rates calculated by the WHD are $44.75 — 51% higher.
The infrastructure money in the stimulus could have gone further if we had ignored the WHD's pro-union "prevailing wage" and did a better job of spreading the wealth around.
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I DO BELIEVE THAT POLITICIANS MUST BELONG TO A UNION THAT CERTIFIES THAT WHAT WE GET IS WORTH THE EXPENSE. ALL OF THOSE IN US GOVT SERVICE SHOULD WALK BACKWARD TO RECEIVE THEIR CHECKS, NO COMPETENCE NO PAY, AND START WITH 511 PLUS IDIOTS ALREADY THERE. DAVE ANDERSON
Davis-Bacon Pork
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, March 10, 2009 4:20 PM PT
Labor: The stimulus bill wastes billions by requiring that labor on funded construction projects be paid a "prevailing," meaning union, wage. Why should our infrastructure be rebuilt under a Jim Crow era law intended to block minorities?
The Depression-era Davis-Bacon Act is applied throughout the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (H.R. 1). The original law, passed in 1931, required federal construction contractors to pay what is determined to be the "prevailing wage" in a given area.
The law was introduced and passed to block wage competition from black construction workers following an Alabama contractor's successful bid on a federal construction project on Long Island in 1927.
At the Department of Labor, two agencies gather information related to wages and labor: the Wage and Labor Division (WHD) as well as the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). It is the WHD that has the job of calculating the prevailing wage under the Davis-Bacon Act.
A 2008 study by Suffolk University and the Beacon Hill Institute found that WHD prevailing wage estimates were 22% higher than the BLS average reported wages paid in various cities. The reason is madness in the WHD's method.
According to the Suffolk study, the structure of the WHD methodology results in lower participation from small and midsize firms, provides an opportunity for unions to dominate the process of reporting wages, and lets as few as 12.5% of survey respondents set wages for the entire universe of workers.
In contrast, the BLS uses the Occupational Employment Survey, which collects wage data from more than 1.2 million establishments. Thus BLS wage estimates rely on a much larger sample that better represents wages that prevail in the labor market.
The application of the Davis-Bacon Act to stimulus projects ensures that stimulus dollars will not go as far as they otherwise could. That will result in fewer people getting jobs while raising the cost of everything we build. According to the Heritage Foundation, Davis-Bacon provisions will drive up construction costs on the $188 billion worth of construction projects in HR 1 by $17 billion.
According to Heritage, WHD's methodology is "unscientific" and relies on "outdated" surveys to produce "inaccurate" information. Heritage describes the BLS as an agency "that accurately estimates wage statistics using scientific methods."
The differences between the two can be significant.
On Long Island, N.Y., for example, market rates for plumbers calculated the BLS way are $29.68 an hour. Davis-Bacon rates calculated by the WHD are $44.75 — 51% higher.
The infrastructure money in the stimulus could have gone further if we had ignored the WHD's pro-union "prevailing wage" and did a better job of spreading the wealth around.
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Rush Vs. The Party Of Soro
THE DEMOCRATS HAVE LOST IT ALL, THE ONLY THING WE CAN DO IS HOPE THAT FROM THIS FIRE PIT OF BARACK OBAMA AND GEORGE SOROS WILL RISE LIKE PHOENIX TO BRING THEM TO SANITY AND TRUTH.
Rush Vs. The Party Of Soro
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, March 10, 2009 4:20 PM PT
Politics: Democrats say Rush Limbaugh is running the Republican Party. Better Rush than George Soros, who is running the Democrats. At least Rush believes in freedom, capitalism and letting you keep what you earn.
The cover of the March 7 issue of Newsweek shows a picture of conservative icon Limbaugh with a piece of tape covering his mouth and the word "Enough!"
So much for disagreeing with what you say but defending to the death your right to say it. Voltaire could never be a contributor to Newsweek.
But David Frum is, and his inside cover story, "Why Rush Is Wrong," savages Limbaugh and praises President Obama in a way that makes one wonder if tingles are running up his leg like they did for MSNBC's Chris Matthews.
Frum describes a debate with, on one side, "the president of the United States: soft-spoken and conciliatory, never angry, always invoking the recession and its victims."
Never mind that Obama helped create the recession when the second-largest recipient of campaign funds from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac behind Chris Dodd helped pressure banks through his association with ACORN. The banks then made the very kind of risky loans that caused the mortgage meltdown.
On the other side, Frum places Limbaugh, with "his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history."
The perfect and athletic Mr. Frum forgot to blame Rush for inciting the Oklahoma City bombing, as many others on the left did.
This is what passes for public discourse these days as the mainstream media see their readers and viewers flee.
Over at MSNBC, where viewership is at microscopic Air America levels, the tingly Matthews over the weekend described Limbaugh as "a human vat of vitriol." He then ran a clip from "You Only Live Twice," where a James Bond villain pushes a victim into a piranha tank. Subtle.
"Do you know what he does?" Matthews says to the Chicago Tribune's Clarence Page. "He defends capitalism." Horrors! Hide the children. To which Page responds that "ever since Reagan we've been on a trend of taxing lower-income people and giving breaks to the upper income."
Page et al. rewrite history into a lie agreed upon. The Reagan and Bush tax cuts went to those who pay taxes, to those who pull the wagon rather than those riding it.
They were not given anything. They were allowed to keep their own money. No wealth was redistributed or spread around unlike Obama's plan. The fact is that "ever since Reagan" the rich have borne an ever-increasing share of the tax burden while the poor have been removed entirely from the tax rolls.
A study for the National Center for Policy Analysis shows that from 1986 to 2004, the total share of the income tax burden paid by the top 1% of income earners grew by nearly half, from 25.8% to 36.9%. Over that same time, wrote study author Michael Stroup, an economist and associate dean of the Nelson Rusche College of Business at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas, the burden of the bottom 50% of earners was almost halved from 6.5% to 3.3%.
The Tax Foundation has noted that in 2000, a year before the first tax cuts under Bush, roughly 30 million tax returns had no income tax liability. Every dollar those earners made they kept.
By 2004, a year after the second round of cuts was passed, 43 million returns had no tax. It estimates that, in all, more than 25 million Americans have been wiped off the federal tax rolls just by President Bush.
Yes, Rush wants Obama's socialism to fail just as liberals and Democrats wanted Bush's defense of capitalism and freedom to fail.
A Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll of 900 registered voters taken Aug. 8-9, 2006, asked this question: "Regardless of how you voted in the presidential election, would you say you want President Bush to succeed or not?" Fifty-one percent of Democrats said no, they did not want Bush to succeed.
Another Fox poll taken Jan. 16-17, 2007, asked respondents about the surge in Iraq: "Do you personally want the Iraq plan President Bush announced last week to succeed?" An astounding 34% said they did not want the surge to succeed. Among Democratic Party leaders the percentage was probably close to 100%.
If, as White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel says, Rush Limbaugh "is the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party," it is only fair to ask: Who is his Democratic counterpart?
Our nominee is George Soros, the Hungarian billionaire and former Nazi sympathizer who helped fund MoveOn.org, the radical group that smeared Gen. David Petraeus with its "General Betray Us" ad last fall.
Through his Open Society Initiative and personal contributions Soros has funded many liberal causes and many Democratic candidates with the intent of undermining democracy and capitalism. His ultimate goal is to create a global socialist collective where we hand over our money and/or freedom and sing "Kumbaya."
For our part, we'll take Rush over Soros.
Rush believes in the Constitution and the First Amendment. He believes in freedom of religion and the freedom of speech. He believes in the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms to protect all our freedoms.
He believes in securing our borders and taking the war on terror to the enemy and winning. He believes that traditional marriage between a man and a woman is the bedrock of any stable society.
He believes that taxes should be low and are to fund the constitutional functions of government. He believes that government should work for us and not the other way around.
Rush does not believe, as Soros and the Democrats do, in open borders, confiscatory taxation, redistribution of wealth, a gutted military, appeasing despots or being forced under penalty of imprisonment to pay through our taxes other people's mortgages.
And, unlike George Soros and the Democrats, we will defend to the death his right to say it.
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Rush Vs. The Party Of Soro
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, March 10, 2009 4:20 PM PT
Politics: Democrats say Rush Limbaugh is running the Republican Party. Better Rush than George Soros, who is running the Democrats. At least Rush believes in freedom, capitalism and letting you keep what you earn.
The cover of the March 7 issue of Newsweek shows a picture of conservative icon Limbaugh with a piece of tape covering his mouth and the word "Enough!"
So much for disagreeing with what you say but defending to the death your right to say it. Voltaire could never be a contributor to Newsweek.
But David Frum is, and his inside cover story, "Why Rush Is Wrong," savages Limbaugh and praises President Obama in a way that makes one wonder if tingles are running up his leg like they did for MSNBC's Chris Matthews.
Frum describes a debate with, on one side, "the president of the United States: soft-spoken and conciliatory, never angry, always invoking the recession and its victims."
Never mind that Obama helped create the recession when the second-largest recipient of campaign funds from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac behind Chris Dodd helped pressure banks through his association with ACORN. The banks then made the very kind of risky loans that caused the mortgage meltdown.
On the other side, Frum places Limbaugh, with "his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history."
The perfect and athletic Mr. Frum forgot to blame Rush for inciting the Oklahoma City bombing, as many others on the left did.
This is what passes for public discourse these days as the mainstream media see their readers and viewers flee.
Over at MSNBC, where viewership is at microscopic Air America levels, the tingly Matthews over the weekend described Limbaugh as "a human vat of vitriol." He then ran a clip from "You Only Live Twice," where a James Bond villain pushes a victim into a piranha tank. Subtle.
"Do you know what he does?" Matthews says to the Chicago Tribune's Clarence Page. "He defends capitalism." Horrors! Hide the children. To which Page responds that "ever since Reagan we've been on a trend of taxing lower-income people and giving breaks to the upper income."
Page et al. rewrite history into a lie agreed upon. The Reagan and Bush tax cuts went to those who pay taxes, to those who pull the wagon rather than those riding it.
They were not given anything. They were allowed to keep their own money. No wealth was redistributed or spread around unlike Obama's plan. The fact is that "ever since Reagan" the rich have borne an ever-increasing share of the tax burden while the poor have been removed entirely from the tax rolls.
A study for the National Center for Policy Analysis shows that from 1986 to 2004, the total share of the income tax burden paid by the top 1% of income earners grew by nearly half, from 25.8% to 36.9%. Over that same time, wrote study author Michael Stroup, an economist and associate dean of the Nelson Rusche College of Business at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas, the burden of the bottom 50% of earners was almost halved from 6.5% to 3.3%.
The Tax Foundation has noted that in 2000, a year before the first tax cuts under Bush, roughly 30 million tax returns had no income tax liability. Every dollar those earners made they kept.
By 2004, a year after the second round of cuts was passed, 43 million returns had no tax. It estimates that, in all, more than 25 million Americans have been wiped off the federal tax rolls just by President Bush.
Yes, Rush wants Obama's socialism to fail just as liberals and Democrats wanted Bush's defense of capitalism and freedom to fail.
A Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll of 900 registered voters taken Aug. 8-9, 2006, asked this question: "Regardless of how you voted in the presidential election, would you say you want President Bush to succeed or not?" Fifty-one percent of Democrats said no, they did not want Bush to succeed.
Another Fox poll taken Jan. 16-17, 2007, asked respondents about the surge in Iraq: "Do you personally want the Iraq plan President Bush announced last week to succeed?" An astounding 34% said they did not want the surge to succeed. Among Democratic Party leaders the percentage was probably close to 100%.
If, as White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel says, Rush Limbaugh "is the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party," it is only fair to ask: Who is his Democratic counterpart?
Our nominee is George Soros, the Hungarian billionaire and former Nazi sympathizer who helped fund MoveOn.org, the radical group that smeared Gen. David Petraeus with its "General Betray Us" ad last fall.
Through his Open Society Initiative and personal contributions Soros has funded many liberal causes and many Democratic candidates with the intent of undermining democracy and capitalism. His ultimate goal is to create a global socialist collective where we hand over our money and/or freedom and sing "Kumbaya."
For our part, we'll take Rush over Soros.
Rush believes in the Constitution and the First Amendment. He believes in freedom of religion and the freedom of speech. He believes in the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms to protect all our freedoms.
He believes in securing our borders and taking the war on terror to the enemy and winning. He believes that traditional marriage between a man and a woman is the bedrock of any stable society.
He believes that taxes should be low and are to fund the constitutional functions of government. He believes that government should work for us and not the other way around.
Rush does not believe, as Soros and the Democrats do, in open borders, confiscatory taxation, redistribution of wealth, a gutted military, appeasing despots or being forced under penalty of imprisonment to pay through our taxes other people's mortgages.
And, unlike George Soros and the Democrats, we will defend to the death his right to say it.
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Monday, March 9, 2009
Chas And The ChiComs
IT APPEARS TO ME THAT THE QUALIFICATIONS TO BE IN OBAMA'S CABINET YOU NEED TO BE A CROOK, OR OWE TAXES, OR BE A SOCIALIST COMMUNIST LYING DEMOCRATIC SOB
Chas And The ChiComs
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, March 09, 2009 4:20 PM PT
National Security: It seems the foreign conflicts of interest to the man President Obama wants to oversee his eyes-only intelligence are worse than first reported. It's time for full disclosure.
We recently argued ("The Wrong Man For The Job") that National Intelligence Council appointee Chas Freeman's cozy ties with China and Saudi Arabia should disqualify him from heading the group that prepares the U.S. intelligence community's most sensitive reports.
Freeman will have access to America's closest guarded secrets and draft the consensus view of all 16 intelligence agencies regarding foreign threats to U.S. security.
Now we learn that, in addition to co-chairing the pro-China lobby's U.S. China Policy Foundation, he sits on the international advisory board of the Beijing-controlled China National Offshore Oil Corp.
CNOOC has invested in Sudan, Iran and other terror states, and for these and other security reasons, it was blocked from buying U.S. energy giant Unocal in 2004.
Obama during the presidential campaign scolded a McCain adviser for lobbying work he did for CNOOC.
As we previously noted, Freeman also heads the Saudi-backed Middle East Policy Council, which paid him close to $90,000 in 2006 and received at last $1 million from a Saudi prince, as well as heavy funding from the bin Laden family.
Freeman at the same time runs a consulting firm, Projects International Inc., which did Mideast deals with the bin Ladens even after 9/11. Another client, Gulf Catering Co., was accused of offering a $50,000 bribe to an Army officer in Iraq to win a U.S. military contract there.
These financial ties may explain why Freeman has steadfastly apologized for China and bashed Israel. He has said Beijing was too slow to crush the pro-democracy rebellion in Tiananmen, and has called a Chinese mainland takeover of Taiwan "very beneficial."
"As I understand it," he added, buying into Politburo propaganda, "the Chinese proposal would allow Taiwan to continue to choose its own leaders through elections, and would not assign any government personnel to the island from the mainland. Taiwan's newly democratized political system would not be affected by reunification."
Freeman, another Clinton retread, also apologized for Beijing's clumsy influence-buying during the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign, arguing China was simply trying to compete with the Taiwan lobby.
Freeman's Mideast policy views align conveniently with Riyadh's. Parroting the official Saudi line, Freeman has warned the U.S. will remain a terror target if it continues to support Israel's "brutal oppression of the Palestinians."
According to the Washington Times, Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., and other members of Congress have asked an inspector general to look into Freeman's foreign ties.
While this is welcome news, it's already plain Freeman's foreign conflicts have affected his judgment.
He simply does not possess the objectivity that this high-level intelligence job demands.
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Chas And The ChiComs
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, March 09, 2009 4:20 PM PT
National Security: It seems the foreign conflicts of interest to the man President Obama wants to oversee his eyes-only intelligence are worse than first reported. It's time for full disclosure.
We recently argued ("The Wrong Man For The Job") that National Intelligence Council appointee Chas Freeman's cozy ties with China and Saudi Arabia should disqualify him from heading the group that prepares the U.S. intelligence community's most sensitive reports.
Freeman will have access to America's closest guarded secrets and draft the consensus view of all 16 intelligence agencies regarding foreign threats to U.S. security.
Now we learn that, in addition to co-chairing the pro-China lobby's U.S. China Policy Foundation, he sits on the international advisory board of the Beijing-controlled China National Offshore Oil Corp.
CNOOC has invested in Sudan, Iran and other terror states, and for these and other security reasons, it was blocked from buying U.S. energy giant Unocal in 2004.
Obama during the presidential campaign scolded a McCain adviser for lobbying work he did for CNOOC.
As we previously noted, Freeman also heads the Saudi-backed Middle East Policy Council, which paid him close to $90,000 in 2006 and received at last $1 million from a Saudi prince, as well as heavy funding from the bin Laden family.
Freeman at the same time runs a consulting firm, Projects International Inc., which did Mideast deals with the bin Ladens even after 9/11. Another client, Gulf Catering Co., was accused of offering a $50,000 bribe to an Army officer in Iraq to win a U.S. military contract there.
These financial ties may explain why Freeman has steadfastly apologized for China and bashed Israel. He has said Beijing was too slow to crush the pro-democracy rebellion in Tiananmen, and has called a Chinese mainland takeover of Taiwan "very beneficial."
"As I understand it," he added, buying into Politburo propaganda, "the Chinese proposal would allow Taiwan to continue to choose its own leaders through elections, and would not assign any government personnel to the island from the mainland. Taiwan's newly democratized political system would not be affected by reunification."
Freeman, another Clinton retread, also apologized for Beijing's clumsy influence-buying during the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign, arguing China was simply trying to compete with the Taiwan lobby.
Freeman's Mideast policy views align conveniently with Riyadh's. Parroting the official Saudi line, Freeman has warned the U.S. will remain a terror target if it continues to support Israel's "brutal oppression of the Palestinians."
According to the Washington Times, Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., and other members of Congress have asked an inspector general to look into Freeman's foreign ties.
While this is welcome news, it's already plain Freeman's foreign conflicts have affected his judgment.
He simply does not possess the objectivity that this high-level intelligence job demands.
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Quote of the Day
*
THIS IS AN ATTENTION NOTE TO THE OBAMA CROUD 'NO SOCIALISM HERE' DAA
Quote of the Day Perhaps the Year
"You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."
~~~~~ The late Dr. Adrian Rogers, 1931 - 2005
THIS IS AN ATTENTION NOTE TO THE OBAMA CROUD 'NO SOCIALISM HERE' DAA
Quote of the Day Perhaps the Year
"You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."
~~~~~ The late Dr. Adrian Rogers, 1931 - 2005
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Obama's Radicalism Is Killing the Dow
Obama's Radicalism Is Killing the Dow
OPINION MARCH 6, 2009
A financial crisis is the worst time to change the foundations of American capitalism.
Article By MICHAEL J. BOSKIN
It's hard not to see the continued sell-off on Wall Street and the growing fear on Main Street as a product, at least in part, of the realization that our new president's policies are designed to radically re-engineer the market-based U.S. economy, not just mitigate the recession and financial crisis.
Martin KozlowskiThe illusion that Barack Obama will lead from the economic center has quickly come to an end. Instead of combining the best policies of past Democratic presidents -- John Kennedy on taxes, Bill Clinton on welfare reform and a balanced budget, for instance -- President Obama is returning to Jimmy Carter's higher taxes and Mr. Clinton's draconian defense drawdown.
Mr. Obama's $3.6 trillion budget blueprint, by his own admission, redefines the role of government in our economy and society. The budget more than doubles the national debt held by the public, adding more to the debt than all previous presidents -- from George Washington to George W. Bush -- combined. It reduces defense spending to a level not sustained since the dangerous days before World War II, while increasing nondefense spending (relative to GDP) to the highest level in U.S. history. And it would raise taxes to historically high levels (again, relative to GDP). And all of this before addressing the impending explosion in Social Security and Medicare costs.
To be fair, specific parts of the president's budget are admirable and deserve support: increased means-testing in agriculture and medical payments; permanent indexing of the alternative minimum tax and other tax reductions; recognizing the need for further financial rescue and likely losses thereon; and bringing spending into the budget that was previously in supplemental appropriations, such as funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The specific problems, however, far outweigh the positives. First are the quite optimistic forecasts, despite the higher taxes and government micromanagement that will harm the economy. The budget projects a much shallower recession and stronger recovery than private forecasters or the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office are projecting. It implies a vast amount of additional spending and higher taxes, above and beyond even these record levels. For example, it calls for a down payment on universal health care, with the additional "resources" needed "TBD" (to be determined).
Mr. Obama has bravely said he will deal with the projected deficits in Medicare and Social Security. While reform of these programs is vital, the president has shown little interest in reining in the growth of real spending per beneficiary, and he has rejected increasing the retirement age. Instead, he's proposed additional taxes on earnings above the current payroll tax cap of $106,800 -- a bad policy that would raise marginal tax rates still further and barely dent the long-run deficit.
Increasing the top tax rates on earnings to 39.6% and on capital gains and dividends to 20% will reduce incentives for our most productive citizens and small businesses to work, save and invest -- with effective rates higher still because of restrictions on itemized deductions and raising the Social Security cap. As every economics student learns, high marginal rates distort economic decisions, the damage from which rises with the square of the rates (doubling the rates quadruples the harm). The president claims he is only hitting 2% of the population, but many more will at some point be in these brackets.
As for energy policy, the president's cap-and-trade plan for CO2 would ensnare a vast network of covered sources, opening up countless opportunities for political manipulation, bureaucracy, or worse. It would likely exacerbate volatility in energy prices, as permit prices soar in booms and collapse in busts. The European emissions trading system has been a dismal failure. A direct, transparent carbon tax would be far better.
Moreover, the president's energy proposals radically underestimate the time frame for bringing alternatives plausibly to scale. His own Energy Department estimates we will need a lot more oil and gas in the meantime, necessitating $11 trillion in capital investment to avoid permanently higher prices.
The president proposes a large defense drawdown to pay for exploding nondefense outlays -- similar to those of Presidents Carter and Clinton -- which were widely perceived by both Republicans and Democrats as having gone too far, leaving large holes in our military. We paid a high price for those mistakes and should not repeat them.
The president's proposed limitations on the value of itemized deductions for those in the top tax brackets would clobber itemized charitable contributions, half of which are by those at the top. This change effectively increases the cost to the donor by roughly 20% (to just over 72 cents from 60 cents per dollar donated). Estimates of the responsiveness of giving to after-tax prices range from a bit above to a little below proportionate, so reductions in giving will be large and permanent, even after the recession ends and the financial markets rebound.
A similar effect will exacerbate tax flight from states like California and New York, which rely on steeply progressive income taxes collecting a large fraction of revenue from a small fraction of their residents. This attack on decentralization permeates the budget -- e.g., killing the private fee-for-service Medicare option -- and will curtail the experimentation, innovation and competition that provide a road map to greater effectiveness.
The pervasive government subsidies and mandates -- in health, pharmaceuticals, energy and the like -- will do a poor job of picking winners and losers (ask the Japanese or Europeans) and will be difficult to unwind as recipients lobby for continuation and expansion. Expanding the scale and scope of government largess means that more and more of our best entrepreneurs, managers and workers will spend their time and talent chasing handouts subject to bureaucratic diktats, not the marketplace needs and wants of consumers.
Our competitors have lower corporate tax rates and tax only domestic earnings, yet the budget seeks to restrict deferral of taxes on overseas earnings, arguing it drives jobs overseas. But the academic research (most notably by Mihir Desai, C. Fritz Foley and James Hines Jr.) reveals the opposite: American firms' overseas investments strengthen their domestic operations and employee compensation.
New and expanded refundable tax credits would raise the fraction of taxpayers paying no income taxes to almost 50% from 38%. This is potentially the most pernicious feature of the president's budget, because it would cement a permanent voting majority with no stake in controlling the cost of general government.
From the poorly designed stimulus bill and vague new financial rescue plan, to the enormous expansion of government spending, taxes and debt somehow permanently strengthening economic growth, the assumptions underlying the president's economic program seem bereft of rigorous analysis and a careful reading of history.
Unfortunately, our history suggests new government programs, however noble the intent, more often wind up delivering less, more slowly, at far higher cost than projected, with potentially damaging unintended consequences. The most recent case, of course, was the government's meddling in the housing market to bring home ownership to low-income families, which became a prime cause of the current economic and financial disaster.
On the growth effects of a large expansion of government, the European social welfare states present a window on our potential future: standards of living permanently 30% lower than ours. Rounding off perceived rough edges of our economic system may well be called for, but a major, perhaps irreversible, step toward a European-style social welfare state with its concomitant long-run economic stagnation is not.
Mr. Boskin is a professor of economics at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He chaired the Council of Economic Advisers under President George H.W. Bush.
OPINION MARCH 6, 2009
A financial crisis is the worst time to change the foundations of American capitalism.
Article By MICHAEL J. BOSKIN
It's hard not to see the continued sell-off on Wall Street and the growing fear on Main Street as a product, at least in part, of the realization that our new president's policies are designed to radically re-engineer the market-based U.S. economy, not just mitigate the recession and financial crisis.
Martin KozlowskiThe illusion that Barack Obama will lead from the economic center has quickly come to an end. Instead of combining the best policies of past Democratic presidents -- John Kennedy on taxes, Bill Clinton on welfare reform and a balanced budget, for instance -- President Obama is returning to Jimmy Carter's higher taxes and Mr. Clinton's draconian defense drawdown.
Mr. Obama's $3.6 trillion budget blueprint, by his own admission, redefines the role of government in our economy and society. The budget more than doubles the national debt held by the public, adding more to the debt than all previous presidents -- from George Washington to George W. Bush -- combined. It reduces defense spending to a level not sustained since the dangerous days before World War II, while increasing nondefense spending (relative to GDP) to the highest level in U.S. history. And it would raise taxes to historically high levels (again, relative to GDP). And all of this before addressing the impending explosion in Social Security and Medicare costs.
To be fair, specific parts of the president's budget are admirable and deserve support: increased means-testing in agriculture and medical payments; permanent indexing of the alternative minimum tax and other tax reductions; recognizing the need for further financial rescue and likely losses thereon; and bringing spending into the budget that was previously in supplemental appropriations, such as funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The specific problems, however, far outweigh the positives. First are the quite optimistic forecasts, despite the higher taxes and government micromanagement that will harm the economy. The budget projects a much shallower recession and stronger recovery than private forecasters or the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office are projecting. It implies a vast amount of additional spending and higher taxes, above and beyond even these record levels. For example, it calls for a down payment on universal health care, with the additional "resources" needed "TBD" (to be determined).
Mr. Obama has bravely said he will deal with the projected deficits in Medicare and Social Security. While reform of these programs is vital, the president has shown little interest in reining in the growth of real spending per beneficiary, and he has rejected increasing the retirement age. Instead, he's proposed additional taxes on earnings above the current payroll tax cap of $106,800 -- a bad policy that would raise marginal tax rates still further and barely dent the long-run deficit.
Increasing the top tax rates on earnings to 39.6% and on capital gains and dividends to 20% will reduce incentives for our most productive citizens and small businesses to work, save and invest -- with effective rates higher still because of restrictions on itemized deductions and raising the Social Security cap. As every economics student learns, high marginal rates distort economic decisions, the damage from which rises with the square of the rates (doubling the rates quadruples the harm). The president claims he is only hitting 2% of the population, but many more will at some point be in these brackets.
As for energy policy, the president's cap-and-trade plan for CO2 would ensnare a vast network of covered sources, opening up countless opportunities for political manipulation, bureaucracy, or worse. It would likely exacerbate volatility in energy prices, as permit prices soar in booms and collapse in busts. The European emissions trading system has been a dismal failure. A direct, transparent carbon tax would be far better.
Moreover, the president's energy proposals radically underestimate the time frame for bringing alternatives plausibly to scale. His own Energy Department estimates we will need a lot more oil and gas in the meantime, necessitating $11 trillion in capital investment to avoid permanently higher prices.
The president proposes a large defense drawdown to pay for exploding nondefense outlays -- similar to those of Presidents Carter and Clinton -- which were widely perceived by both Republicans and Democrats as having gone too far, leaving large holes in our military. We paid a high price for those mistakes and should not repeat them.
The president's proposed limitations on the value of itemized deductions for those in the top tax brackets would clobber itemized charitable contributions, half of which are by those at the top. This change effectively increases the cost to the donor by roughly 20% (to just over 72 cents from 60 cents per dollar donated). Estimates of the responsiveness of giving to after-tax prices range from a bit above to a little below proportionate, so reductions in giving will be large and permanent, even after the recession ends and the financial markets rebound.
A similar effect will exacerbate tax flight from states like California and New York, which rely on steeply progressive income taxes collecting a large fraction of revenue from a small fraction of their residents. This attack on decentralization permeates the budget -- e.g., killing the private fee-for-service Medicare option -- and will curtail the experimentation, innovation and competition that provide a road map to greater effectiveness.
The pervasive government subsidies and mandates -- in health, pharmaceuticals, energy and the like -- will do a poor job of picking winners and losers (ask the Japanese or Europeans) and will be difficult to unwind as recipients lobby for continuation and expansion. Expanding the scale and scope of government largess means that more and more of our best entrepreneurs, managers and workers will spend their time and talent chasing handouts subject to bureaucratic diktats, not the marketplace needs and wants of consumers.
Our competitors have lower corporate tax rates and tax only domestic earnings, yet the budget seeks to restrict deferral of taxes on overseas earnings, arguing it drives jobs overseas. But the academic research (most notably by Mihir Desai, C. Fritz Foley and James Hines Jr.) reveals the opposite: American firms' overseas investments strengthen their domestic operations and employee compensation.
New and expanded refundable tax credits would raise the fraction of taxpayers paying no income taxes to almost 50% from 38%. This is potentially the most pernicious feature of the president's budget, because it would cement a permanent voting majority with no stake in controlling the cost of general government.
From the poorly designed stimulus bill and vague new financial rescue plan, to the enormous expansion of government spending, taxes and debt somehow permanently strengthening economic growth, the assumptions underlying the president's economic program seem bereft of rigorous analysis and a careful reading of history.
Unfortunately, our history suggests new government programs, however noble the intent, more often wind up delivering less, more slowly, at far higher cost than projected, with potentially damaging unintended consequences. The most recent case, of course, was the government's meddling in the housing market to bring home ownership to low-income families, which became a prime cause of the current economic and financial disaster.
On the growth effects of a large expansion of government, the European social welfare states present a window on our potential future: standards of living permanently 30% lower than ours. Rounding off perceived rough edges of our economic system may well be called for, but a major, perhaps irreversible, step toward a European-style social welfare state with its concomitant long-run economic stagnation is not.
Mr. Boskin is a professor of economics at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He chaired the Council of Economic Advisers under President George H.W. Bush.
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Headlines (Scroll down for complete stories):
1. Obama Intel Appointment Angers Israel Supporters
2. Solzhenitsyn Feared KGB Targeted Him in U.S.
3. Obama’s Donor-Packed Economic Advisory Board
4. Chinese Spies Infiltrating U.S. Businesses
5. Obama Uses Code Language for Blacks
6. Kasparov: Putin Camp ‘Teetering Toward Collapse’
7. We Heard: Gordon Brown, Sen. Inhofe
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Obama Intel Appointment Angers Israel Supporters
President Barack Obama's administration has sparked controversy with its choice for chairman of the National Intelligence Council — a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia who has staunchly supported anti-Israel views.
In his new post, Charles W. Freeman — who was ambassador from 1989 to 1992 and served during Operation Desert Storm — will be responsible for overseeing the production of National Intelligence Estimates and other intelligence data.
The Power Line blog observed that “Saudi shill” Freeman’s “loyalty to Saudi Arabia and his outside-the-mainstream views on the Middle East make him a strange choice for the post, to say the least.”
For the past 12 years, Freeman has been president of the Middle East Policy Council (MEPC), which has received funding from Saudi Arabia and lobbies on behalf of the Arab world.
Views expressed in the organization’s journal, "Middle East Policy," argue that the invasion of Iraq was launched to aid Israel, saying that “the war was an excuse to enlarge the U.S. strategic ‘footprint’ on top of the lakes of oil in the Gulf region and make life easier for Israel, starting with the easiest problem case, Iraq.”
The MEPC published what it called an “unabridged” version of “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” by professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. That controversial 2006 essay asserted that American Jews have a “stranglehold” on the U.S. Congress which they exploit to tilt America toward Israel at the expense of broader national interests.
In a 2007 address, Freeman stated that “Israel no longer even pretends to seek peace with the Palestinians” and decried “the brutal oppression of the Palestinians by an Israeli occupation,” The Wall Street Journal reported.
The MEPC’s political action group publishes a book that teaches children that Muslims discovered the New World. It cites two sources that claim Muslims reached the Western Hemisphere in pre-Columbian times and spread throughout the Americas.
When explorers reached the New World, according to the sources, they met “Iroquois and Algonquin chiefs with names like Abdul-Rahim and Abdallah Ibn Malik.”
Freeman maintained business ties to the bin Laden family and their Saudi Binladen Group construction conglomerate even after the 9/11 attacks. He said in an interview with The Associated Press less than a month after Sept. 11 that he was still “discussing proposals with the Binladen Group — and that won’t change.”
Regarding the terrorist attacks, Freeman said at a 2002 conference that Osama bin Laden “almost certainly” perpetrated 9/11, the hijackers “probably” were recruited in Saudi Arabia, and Americans should ponder “what might have caused the attack.”
Freeman has also created concern over his views on China, saying in 2006 that the specter of a Chinese threat to the U.S. is nothing more than “a great fundraiser for the hyper-expensive advanced weaponry our military-industrial complex prefers to make.”
Freeman also opined that the Chinese government exercised “overly cautious behavior” regarding the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests that led to a massacre of demonstrators.
Freeman was on the international advisory board of the China National Offshore Oil Corporation, which is owned by the Chinese government, while it was doing business with Iran, according to the Weekly Standard.
In 2006, the Chinese firm reportedly agreed to a multibillion-dollar deal with the state-owned Iranian oil company that may violate U.S. sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
Members of the pro-Israeli community have privately criticized Freeman’s appointment, according to The Washington Times.
“Freeman is well-known for his hostility toward Israel, but what's more substantively troubling . . . is the obvious inappropriateness of hiring a well-known advocate for the interests of Middle Eastern autocracies to produce national intelligence estimates for the Obama Administration,” Jeffrey Goldberg wrote in The Atlantic.
And House Republican Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia said: “Freeman’s past associations and positions on foreign policy are deeply alarming. His statements about the U.S.-Israel relationship raise serious questions about his ability to support the administration’s attempts to bring security, stability, and peace to the Middle East.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. Solzhenitsyn Feared KGB Targeted Him in U.S.
Even after he was expelled from the Soviet Union and was living in the U.S., dissident Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn feared for his life at the hands of the KGB.
Official documents obtained by Newsmax under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) disclose that at one point Solzhenitsyn, who died in August 2008, sought permission to carry a gun due to his concern over the Soviet secret police.
Solzhenitsyn, author of “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” and “The Gulag Archipelago” and the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970, was an outspoken critic of the Soviet government and communism.
He was expelled from the USSR in 1974 and stripped of his Soviet citizenship. He eventually found his way to the U.S.
A June 1975 memo sent to the FBI director stated that Solzhenitsyn was visiting in Oregon and wanted his visit to remain confidential because he “fears the KGB and is apprehensive about his safety.”
Another document dated May 24, 1976, said Solzhenitsyn was at Stanford University in California conducting research for a new book. He asked his host there to approach the head of the Stanford police services and request a gun permit for Solzhenitsyn, who “feels he is in imminent danger.”
Solzhenitsyn reported that “some very disturbing events have taken place in Switzerland,” and the FBI stated that “this causes Solzhenitsyn to fear for his life.”
But the FBI said: “Solzhenitsyn is an alien and therefore is not eligible for a gun permit.”
The writer’s host then asked if he could lend Solzhenitsyn his .45 automatic, and it was “strongly recommended that he not.”
The FBI noted that at the time the Bureau knew of no Soviet plans to harass or harm Solzhenitsyn.
As for the “disturbing events” in Switzerland, the document noted speculation that Solzhenitsyn was “upset about a copy of a letter that had surfaced in Switzerland by a news correspondent. In this letter, the Soviet government accused Solzhenitsyn of collaborating with the KGB while he was confined in a prison camp many years ago.”
Soon after Solzhenitsyn arrived in the U.S., agents at the Bureau were advised to limit their “coverage” of the Russian exile, who “is an internationally prominent individual, and hence investigation of him by the Bureau might have undesirable repercussions.”
One curious document in Solzhenitsyn’s file concerns syndicated columnist Jack Anderson. According to the memo written before Solzhenitsyn left the Soviet Union, Anderson claimed that the U.S. government was harassing him in the “same manner that the Soviets are harassing Alexander Solzhenitsyn.”
Anderson “claims that ‘government gumshoes’ have staked out his house, kept it under surveillance through binoculars, and surveilled Anderson wherever he goes. Anderson claims the license numbers on these cars have been traced to the FBI.
“He also claims that the FBI has prepared ‘a thick dossier’ on him which is full of raw, unconfirmed allegations . . . He says this campaign resembles the Soviet harassment of Solzhenitsyn ‘for the same crime of criticizing the government.’”
Under the heading “Observations,” the memo writer wryly stated: “It is obvious that the accuracy of Anderson’s reporting has not improved. We have not, of course, had him under investigation, nor have any Bureau cars had him as the subject of surveillance.
“As usual, Anderson is grasping at anything, fact or fiction, to attract attention, this time apparently in the belief that he belongs to the same company as a writer of the stature of Solzhenitsyn.”
Solzhenitsyn’s FOIA file contains no documents dated later than January 1983. He returned to Russia in 1994.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. Obama’s Economic Advisory Board Packed with Donors
President Barack Obama’s newly appointed Economic Recovery Advisory Board includes members who could likely have benefitted from economic advice themselves.
One is Penny Pritzker, founder of Pritzker Realty Group, whose Chicago-area bank was shut down after it invested heavily in subprime mortgage loans. The Office of Thrift Supervision closed Superior Bank and its 18 branch offices in July 2001 after the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said its financial situation had “rapidly deteriorated.”
A sharp rise in defaults by borrowers with subprime mortgages is blamed in large part for the recent economic meltdown.
Another member of Obama’s board is Jeffrey Immelt, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of General Electric Co., whose shares recently fell to an 18-year low amid anxiety over a possible downgrade for the firm’s credit worthiness.
But most troubling perhaps is the fact that 11 of the board’s members donated or raised significant amounts of money for Obama and Democrats in the last election, The Washington Times reported exclusively on Thursday.
Obama described members of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board as “distinguished citizens outside the government” who would “bring a diverse set of perspectives and voices from different parts of the country and different sectors of the economy to bear in the formulation and evaluation of economic policy.”
But Craig Holman, legislative director for Public Citizen, a nonpartisan watchdog group, told the Times: “It is distressing to see the president turning to his heavy finance hitters as consultants.”
Board member Mark Gallogly, director of Dana Holding Corp., bundled $200,000 in donations for Obama, and Pritzker — with an estimated worth of $2 billion — raised $200,000.
Member Robert Wolf, president and chief operating officer of the American arm of UBS Investment Bank, raised $500,000 for Obama. The Swiss-based bank is now at the center of a tax evasion investigation by the Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service.
A Senate committee is seeking to force the bank to release its list of American clients suspected of using offshore accounts to avoid U.S. taxes.
Eleven of the board’s 16 members personally donated a total of $262,698 to Obama and other Democrats during the 2008 election campaign, according to the Times. The AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union,
which are both represented on the board, accounted for $3.6 million in donations.
The AFL-CIO’s representative, the organization’s secretary-treasurer, Richard Trumka, was involved in a Clinton-era federal probe into a money-laundering scheme.
According to court documents, Trumka helped divert $150,000 in union funds to Teamsters President Ron Carey’s 1996 re-election campaign through a liberal consumer-advocacy group.
Trumka invoked his Fifth Amendment rights and refused to testify before a federal grand jury and a House subcommittee.
Obama’s advisory board is headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, and his staff director is economist Austan Goolsbee — who in March 2007 wrote a New York Times article defending subprime mortgages.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4. Chinese Spies Infiltrating U.S. Businesses
The Federal Bureau of Investigation believes that Chinese agents are increasingly infiltrating and spying on American businesses.
“The feds estimate that there are more than 2,600 Chinese front companies in the U.S.,” according to Jim Kouri, vice president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police. “The foreign intelligence threat within the United States is far more complex than it has ever been historically.
“Intelligence collection is no longer limited to classified national defense information but now includes targeting of the elements of national power, including our national economic interests.”
The Insider Report in late 2007 quoted from a document issued by the Maldon Institute think tank, which stated that the FBI believes that the “real job” of Chinese front companies in the U.S. “is to direct espionage efforts. Then there are thousands of Chinese visitors, students, and business people. How many of them have tasks to perform for Beijing’s Ministry of State Security?”
The Maldon Institute reported that the Chinese had stolen $24 billion worth of secrets over a three-year period, and that many of these items enabled China to accelerate its space program.
Kouri, writing on the Family Security Matters Web site, said that in order to meet these challenges, “the Foreign Counterintelligence Program is being redesigned to become more nationally focused and directed . . .
“The FBI has a major role in identifying threats to Critical National Assets and assessing their overall vulnerability, especially in the areas of economic espionage, academic research, and private sector research and development . . .
“Critical National Assets are any information, policies, plans, technologies, or industries that, if stolen, modified, or manipulated by an adversary, would seriously threaten U.S. national or economic security.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5. Obama Uses Code Language for Blacks
Barack Obama has made subtle use of expressions that resonate with black listeners — and only black listeners.
In January remarks about the economy, for example, Obama referred to “American dreams that are being deferred,” a statement that many blacks knew could be attributed to black poet Langston Hughes.
Politico.com also cited the example of Obama’s speech on election night, when he vowed that “we as a people will get there,” echoing Martin Luther King Jr.
And last year when Obama sought to dispel rumors that he is Muslim, he told an audience in South Carolina, “They try to bamboozle you, hoodwink you.”
“All of us knew that he was referencing Malcolm X, and when he said it, the reaction was instantaneous,” said William Jelani Cobb, a professor at Spelman College in Atlanta who specializes in black history and politics.
A video that became an Internet hit showed Obama visiting a restaurant in Washington, D.C., popular with African-Americans. Asked by a cashier if he wanted his change, Obama said, “Nah, we straight.”
Many blacks “got a kick out of their Harvard-educated president sounding, as one commenter wrote on a hip-hop site, ‘mad cool,’” Nia-Malika Henderson observed on Politico.
And at a recent basketball game between the Chicago Bulls and Washington Wizards at D.C.’s Verizon Center, Bulls fan Obama reportedly was “talking trash” with a Wizards fan seated nearby.
Linguist John McWhorter of the Manhattan Institute believes Obama’s use of “coded messaging” is partly conscious because “he knows it arouses black audiences.”
Obama is not the only black politician to go that route. Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, recently used the term “bling-bling” to describe the stimulus package.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6. Kasparov: Putin Regime ‘Teetering Toward Collapse’
The Russian economy is collapsing after “years of criminal mismanagement” and the regime of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin could be doomed, according to Russian dissident Garry Kasparov.
The former world chess champion, who was a candidate in the 2008 Russian presidential race, wrote in an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal that “there is ample evidence suggesting that the Putin regime is teetering toward collapse. One sign: Russia is beefing up its federal security forces in order to violently repress public protests.”
Those protests are increasing in Russia because “many voters didn't care that their elections were rigged until inflation started squeezing them,” said Kasparov, leader of The Other Russia, an anti-Putin coalition. “Time has run out on the illusion of economic prosperity for the average Russian.”
The Russian National Welfare Fund, which was created to back up the state pension system, is being “raided” to prop up monopolistic industries belonging to Putin's closest allies, and that money is going to service debt instead of developing industry, according to Kasparov.
He noted that Russia recently agreed to a deal with China to send Russian oil to China at rock-bottom prices for 20 years in exchange for $25 billion in loans, and observed: “Powerful countries don't cut such deals unless they are desperate for cash. What's happening in Russia is that we are witnessing the survival gambit of a corrupt regime. The question is whether the West will bail out the Russian dictatorship or let it fall.”
Kasparov added that Putin relies heavily on oil revenues to maintain his grip on power, so “it is in his interest to increase tensions in the Middle East as a way of driving up global oil prices. There is no deal the U.S. can cut to stop Putin's Russia from arming Mideast terrorists and helping Iran's nuclear program.”
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was also highly critical of Putin in a recent interview, likening his United Russia party to the worst of the communists he once led and helped bring down, and saying Russia is now a country where the parliament and the judiciary are not fully free.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7. We Heard . . .
THAT the Appeal of Conscience Foundation is honoring British Prime Minister Gordon Brown with its 2009 World Statesman Award.
Rabbi Arthur Schneier, president of the foundation, and its vice president, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, announced Brown’s selection at the residence of the British ambassador to the U.S. on Tuesday, shortly before Brown met with Barack Obama at the White House.
The foundation cited Brown “for his compassionate leadership in dealing with the challenging issues facing humanity, and for his commitment to freedom, human dignity and the environment, and for the major role he has played in helping to stabilize the world’s financial system.”
The Appeal of Conscience Foundation was founded in 1965 to work on behalf of religious freedom, human rights, and tolerance around the world.
Previous winners of its World Statesman Award include French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
THAT Republican Sen. James Inhofe’s staff made a remarkable error in issuing a press release attacking an amendment by Sen. Dick Durbin that encourages “diversity in communication media ownership.”
The press release identified Durbin as a Republican — “R-Ill.”
In fact, Durbin is the Democratic Party whip in the Senate.
Insider Report from Newsmax.com
Headlines (Scroll down for complete stories):
1. Obama Intel Appointment Angers Israel Supporters
2. Solzhenitsyn Feared KGB Targeted Him in U.S.
3. Obama’s Donor-Packed Economic Advisory Board
4. Chinese Spies Infiltrating U.S. Businesses
5. Obama Uses Code Language for Blacks
6. Kasparov: Putin Camp ‘Teetering Toward Collapse’
7. We Heard: Gordon Brown, Sen. Inhofe
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Obama Intel Appointment Angers Israel Supporters
President Barack Obama's administration has sparked controversy with its choice for chairman of the National Intelligence Council — a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia who has staunchly supported anti-Israel views.
In his new post, Charles W. Freeman — who was ambassador from 1989 to 1992 and served during Operation Desert Storm — will be responsible for overseeing the production of National Intelligence Estimates and other intelligence data.
The Power Line blog observed that “Saudi shill” Freeman’s “loyalty to Saudi Arabia and his outside-the-mainstream views on the Middle East make him a strange choice for the post, to say the least.”
For the past 12 years, Freeman has been president of the Middle East Policy Council (MEPC), which has received funding from Saudi Arabia and lobbies on behalf of the Arab world.
Views expressed in the organization’s journal, "Middle East Policy," argue that the invasion of Iraq was launched to aid Israel, saying that “the war was an excuse to enlarge the U.S. strategic ‘footprint’ on top of the lakes of oil in the Gulf region and make life easier for Israel, starting with the easiest problem case, Iraq.”
The MEPC published what it called an “unabridged” version of “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” by professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. That controversial 2006 essay asserted that American Jews have a “stranglehold” on the U.S. Congress which they exploit to tilt America toward Israel at the expense of broader national interests.
In a 2007 address, Freeman stated that “Israel no longer even pretends to seek peace with the Palestinians” and decried “the brutal oppression of the Palestinians by an Israeli occupation,” The Wall Street Journal reported.
The MEPC’s political action group publishes a book that teaches children that Muslims discovered the New World. It cites two sources that claim Muslims reached the Western Hemisphere in pre-Columbian times and spread throughout the Americas.
When explorers reached the New World, according to the sources, they met “Iroquois and Algonquin chiefs with names like Abdul-Rahim and Abdallah Ibn Malik.”
Freeman maintained business ties to the bin Laden family and their Saudi Binladen Group construction conglomerate even after the 9/11 attacks. He said in an interview with The Associated Press less than a month after Sept. 11 that he was still “discussing proposals with the Binladen Group — and that won’t change.”
Regarding the terrorist attacks, Freeman said at a 2002 conference that Osama bin Laden “almost certainly” perpetrated 9/11, the hijackers “probably” were recruited in Saudi Arabia, and Americans should ponder “what might have caused the attack.”
Freeman has also created concern over his views on China, saying in 2006 that the specter of a Chinese threat to the U.S. is nothing more than “a great fundraiser for the hyper-expensive advanced weaponry our military-industrial complex prefers to make.”
Freeman also opined that the Chinese government exercised “overly cautious behavior” regarding the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests that led to a massacre of demonstrators.
Freeman was on the international advisory board of the China National Offshore Oil Corporation, which is owned by the Chinese government, while it was doing business with Iran, according to the Weekly Standard.
In 2006, the Chinese firm reportedly agreed to a multibillion-dollar deal with the state-owned Iranian oil company that may violate U.S. sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
Members of the pro-Israeli community have privately criticized Freeman’s appointment, according to The Washington Times.
“Freeman is well-known for his hostility toward Israel, but what's more substantively troubling . . . is the obvious inappropriateness of hiring a well-known advocate for the interests of Middle Eastern autocracies to produce national intelligence estimates for the Obama Administration,” Jeffrey Goldberg wrote in The Atlantic.
And House Republican Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia said: “Freeman’s past associations and positions on foreign policy are deeply alarming. His statements about the U.S.-Israel relationship raise serious questions about his ability to support the administration’s attempts to bring security, stability, and peace to the Middle East.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. Solzhenitsyn Feared KGB Targeted Him in U.S.
Even after he was expelled from the Soviet Union and was living in the U.S., dissident Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn feared for his life at the hands of the KGB.
Official documents obtained by Newsmax under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) disclose that at one point Solzhenitsyn, who died in August 2008, sought permission to carry a gun due to his concern over the Soviet secret police.
Solzhenitsyn, author of “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” and “The Gulag Archipelago” and the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970, was an outspoken critic of the Soviet government and communism.
He was expelled from the USSR in 1974 and stripped of his Soviet citizenship. He eventually found his way to the U.S.
A June 1975 memo sent to the FBI director stated that Solzhenitsyn was visiting in Oregon and wanted his visit to remain confidential because he “fears the KGB and is apprehensive about his safety.”
Another document dated May 24, 1976, said Solzhenitsyn was at Stanford University in California conducting research for a new book. He asked his host there to approach the head of the Stanford police services and request a gun permit for Solzhenitsyn, who “feels he is in imminent danger.”
Solzhenitsyn reported that “some very disturbing events have taken place in Switzerland,” and the FBI stated that “this causes Solzhenitsyn to fear for his life.”
But the FBI said: “Solzhenitsyn is an alien and therefore is not eligible for a gun permit.”
The writer’s host then asked if he could lend Solzhenitsyn his .45 automatic, and it was “strongly recommended that he not.”
The FBI noted that at the time the Bureau knew of no Soviet plans to harass or harm Solzhenitsyn.
As for the “disturbing events” in Switzerland, the document noted speculation that Solzhenitsyn was “upset about a copy of a letter that had surfaced in Switzerland by a news correspondent. In this letter, the Soviet government accused Solzhenitsyn of collaborating with the KGB while he was confined in a prison camp many years ago.”
Soon after Solzhenitsyn arrived in the U.S., agents at the Bureau were advised to limit their “coverage” of the Russian exile, who “is an internationally prominent individual, and hence investigation of him by the Bureau might have undesirable repercussions.”
One curious document in Solzhenitsyn’s file concerns syndicated columnist Jack Anderson. According to the memo written before Solzhenitsyn left the Soviet Union, Anderson claimed that the U.S. government was harassing him in the “same manner that the Soviets are harassing Alexander Solzhenitsyn.”
Anderson “claims that ‘government gumshoes’ have staked out his house, kept it under surveillance through binoculars, and surveilled Anderson wherever he goes. Anderson claims the license numbers on these cars have been traced to the FBI.
“He also claims that the FBI has prepared ‘a thick dossier’ on him which is full of raw, unconfirmed allegations . . . He says this campaign resembles the Soviet harassment of Solzhenitsyn ‘for the same crime of criticizing the government.’”
Under the heading “Observations,” the memo writer wryly stated: “It is obvious that the accuracy of Anderson’s reporting has not improved. We have not, of course, had him under investigation, nor have any Bureau cars had him as the subject of surveillance.
“As usual, Anderson is grasping at anything, fact or fiction, to attract attention, this time apparently in the belief that he belongs to the same company as a writer of the stature of Solzhenitsyn.”
Solzhenitsyn’s FOIA file contains no documents dated later than January 1983. He returned to Russia in 1994.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3. Obama’s Economic Advisory Board Packed with Donors
President Barack Obama’s newly appointed Economic Recovery Advisory Board includes members who could likely have benefitted from economic advice themselves.
One is Penny Pritzker, founder of Pritzker Realty Group, whose Chicago-area bank was shut down after it invested heavily in subprime mortgage loans. The Office of Thrift Supervision closed Superior Bank and its 18 branch offices in July 2001 after the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said its financial situation had “rapidly deteriorated.”
A sharp rise in defaults by borrowers with subprime mortgages is blamed in large part for the recent economic meltdown.
Another member of Obama’s board is Jeffrey Immelt, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of General Electric Co., whose shares recently fell to an 18-year low amid anxiety over a possible downgrade for the firm’s credit worthiness.
But most troubling perhaps is the fact that 11 of the board’s members donated or raised significant amounts of money for Obama and Democrats in the last election, The Washington Times reported exclusively on Thursday.
Obama described members of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board as “distinguished citizens outside the government” who would “bring a diverse set of perspectives and voices from different parts of the country and different sectors of the economy to bear in the formulation and evaluation of economic policy.”
But Craig Holman, legislative director for Public Citizen, a nonpartisan watchdog group, told the Times: “It is distressing to see the president turning to his heavy finance hitters as consultants.”
Board member Mark Gallogly, director of Dana Holding Corp., bundled $200,000 in donations for Obama, and Pritzker — with an estimated worth of $2 billion — raised $200,000.
Member Robert Wolf, president and chief operating officer of the American arm of UBS Investment Bank, raised $500,000 for Obama. The Swiss-based bank is now at the center of a tax evasion investigation by the Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service.
A Senate committee is seeking to force the bank to release its list of American clients suspected of using offshore accounts to avoid U.S. taxes.
Eleven of the board’s 16 members personally donated a total of $262,698 to Obama and other Democrats during the 2008 election campaign, according to the Times. The AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union,
which are both represented on the board, accounted for $3.6 million in donations.
The AFL-CIO’s representative, the organization’s secretary-treasurer, Richard Trumka, was involved in a Clinton-era federal probe into a money-laundering scheme.
According to court documents, Trumka helped divert $150,000 in union funds to Teamsters President Ron Carey’s 1996 re-election campaign through a liberal consumer-advocacy group.
Trumka invoked his Fifth Amendment rights and refused to testify before a federal grand jury and a House subcommittee.
Obama’s advisory board is headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, and his staff director is economist Austan Goolsbee — who in March 2007 wrote a New York Times article defending subprime mortgages.
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4. Chinese Spies Infiltrating U.S. Businesses
The Federal Bureau of Investigation believes that Chinese agents are increasingly infiltrating and spying on American businesses.
“The feds estimate that there are more than 2,600 Chinese front companies in the U.S.,” according to Jim Kouri, vice president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police. “The foreign intelligence threat within the United States is far more complex than it has ever been historically.
“Intelligence collection is no longer limited to classified national defense information but now includes targeting of the elements of national power, including our national economic interests.”
The Insider Report in late 2007 quoted from a document issued by the Maldon Institute think tank, which stated that the FBI believes that the “real job” of Chinese front companies in the U.S. “is to direct espionage efforts. Then there are thousands of Chinese visitors, students, and business people. How many of them have tasks to perform for Beijing’s Ministry of State Security?”
The Maldon Institute reported that the Chinese had stolen $24 billion worth of secrets over a three-year period, and that many of these items enabled China to accelerate its space program.
Kouri, writing on the Family Security Matters Web site, said that in order to meet these challenges, “the Foreign Counterintelligence Program is being redesigned to become more nationally focused and directed . . .
“The FBI has a major role in identifying threats to Critical National Assets and assessing their overall vulnerability, especially in the areas of economic espionage, academic research, and private sector research and development . . .
“Critical National Assets are any information, policies, plans, technologies, or industries that, if stolen, modified, or manipulated by an adversary, would seriously threaten U.S. national or economic security.”
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5. Obama Uses Code Language for Blacks
Barack Obama has made subtle use of expressions that resonate with black listeners — and only black listeners.
In January remarks about the economy, for example, Obama referred to “American dreams that are being deferred,” a statement that many blacks knew could be attributed to black poet Langston Hughes.
Politico.com also cited the example of Obama’s speech on election night, when he vowed that “we as a people will get there,” echoing Martin Luther King Jr.
And last year when Obama sought to dispel rumors that he is Muslim, he told an audience in South Carolina, “They try to bamboozle you, hoodwink you.”
“All of us knew that he was referencing Malcolm X, and when he said it, the reaction was instantaneous,” said William Jelani Cobb, a professor at Spelman College in Atlanta who specializes in black history and politics.
A video that became an Internet hit showed Obama visiting a restaurant in Washington, D.C., popular with African-Americans. Asked by a cashier if he wanted his change, Obama said, “Nah, we straight.”
Many blacks “got a kick out of their Harvard-educated president sounding, as one commenter wrote on a hip-hop site, ‘mad cool,’” Nia-Malika Henderson observed on Politico.
And at a recent basketball game between the Chicago Bulls and Washington Wizards at D.C.’s Verizon Center, Bulls fan Obama reportedly was “talking trash” with a Wizards fan seated nearby.
Linguist John McWhorter of the Manhattan Institute believes Obama’s use of “coded messaging” is partly conscious because “he knows it arouses black audiences.”
Obama is not the only black politician to go that route. Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, recently used the term “bling-bling” to describe the stimulus package.
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6. Kasparov: Putin Regime ‘Teetering Toward Collapse’
The Russian economy is collapsing after “years of criminal mismanagement” and the regime of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin could be doomed, according to Russian dissident Garry Kasparov.
The former world chess champion, who was a candidate in the 2008 Russian presidential race, wrote in an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal that “there is ample evidence suggesting that the Putin regime is teetering toward collapse. One sign: Russia is beefing up its federal security forces in order to violently repress public protests.”
Those protests are increasing in Russia because “many voters didn't care that their elections were rigged until inflation started squeezing them,” said Kasparov, leader of The Other Russia, an anti-Putin coalition. “Time has run out on the illusion of economic prosperity for the average Russian.”
The Russian National Welfare Fund, which was created to back up the state pension system, is being “raided” to prop up monopolistic industries belonging to Putin's closest allies, and that money is going to service debt instead of developing industry, according to Kasparov.
He noted that Russia recently agreed to a deal with China to send Russian oil to China at rock-bottom prices for 20 years in exchange for $25 billion in loans, and observed: “Powerful countries don't cut such deals unless they are desperate for cash. What's happening in Russia is that we are witnessing the survival gambit of a corrupt regime. The question is whether the West will bail out the Russian dictatorship or let it fall.”
Kasparov added that Putin relies heavily on oil revenues to maintain his grip on power, so “it is in his interest to increase tensions in the Middle East as a way of driving up global oil prices. There is no deal the U.S. can cut to stop Putin's Russia from arming Mideast terrorists and helping Iran's nuclear program.”
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was also highly critical of Putin in a recent interview, likening his United Russia party to the worst of the communists he once led and helped bring down, and saying Russia is now a country where the parliament and the judiciary are not fully free.
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7. We Heard . . .
THAT the Appeal of Conscience Foundation is honoring British Prime Minister Gordon Brown with its 2009 World Statesman Award.
Rabbi Arthur Schneier, president of the foundation, and its vice president, Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, announced Brown’s selection at the residence of the British ambassador to the U.S. on Tuesday, shortly before Brown met with Barack Obama at the White House.
The foundation cited Brown “for his compassionate leadership in dealing with the challenging issues facing humanity, and for his commitment to freedom, human dignity and the environment, and for the major role he has played in helping to stabilize the world’s financial system.”
The Appeal of Conscience Foundation was founded in 1965 to work on behalf of religious freedom, human rights, and tolerance around the world.
Previous winners of its World Statesman Award include French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
THAT Republican Sen. James Inhofe’s staff made a remarkable error in issuing a press release attacking an amendment by Sen. Dick Durbin that encourages “diversity in communication media ownership.”
The press release identified Durbin as a Republican — “R-Ill.”
In fact, Durbin is the Democratic Party whip in the Senate.
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